Climate change uncertainty and supply chain financing

Abstract

We examine the impact of climate change uncertainty on supply chain financing. We find that firms significantly curtail trade credit provision during periods of high climate change uncertainty. The cross-sectional variations of this effect with firm-specific factors such as vulnerability to climate change, asset redeployability, and pollution severity suggest that it is primarily driven by managerial anticipation of physical damage cost rather than regulatory cost that the uncertainty could incur. The moderation of this effect by exogenous regulatory interventions such as state-level staggered adoption of the Climate Change Adaptation Plans and the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act suggests that managerial concerns of such cost can be alleviated through the improvement of climate change preparation and external financing respectively. Overall, our study reveals that climate change undermines the financial resilience of the supply chain and provides timely policy implications for tackling climate change against the backdrop of the global supply chain crisis.