Motivation of Chinese commercial banks to issue green bonds: Financing costs or regulatory arbitrage?

Abstract

This paper analyzes the reasons for the rapid increase in the scale of green bonds issued by Chinese commercial banks in recent years from the perspective of financing costs and regulatory arbitrage. Our empirical results show that the financing cost mechanism cannot explain this increase since the financing costs of green bonds are not lower than those of non-green financial bonds. Furthermore, commercial banks with low asset liquidity engage in regulatory arbitrage to take advantage of the convenience of green bond financing permission to supplement their liquidity. Our results imply that the regulatory arbitrage mechanism is a very important motivation for commercial banks to issue green bonds. To reduce this motivation and ensure the healthy and sustainable development of the green bond market, green ratings of projects should be linked with financing costs as a way to form a positive feedback incentivizing mechanism for green project financers.