Abstract
In recent years, corporate ESG performance has received extensive
attention from academic and practical circles around the world. This paper
examines the impact of corporate ESG performance on financing constraints based
on data from 2012-2019 Chinese A-share listed companies. The findings show that
corporate ESG performance can mitigate corporate financing constraints. The
results remain robust after using the new Environmental Protection Law, a
quasi-natural experiment, with the difference-in-difference model to mitigate
endogeneity. The mechanism test
shows that ESG performance can mitigate corporate financing constraints by
attracting more analyst attention to mitigate information asymmetry and
obtaining more commercial credit. Heterogeneity analysis shows that corporate
ESG performance has a more pronounced effect on alleviating financing constraints
for non-state and high-tech firms.
Keywords: ESG, Financing constraints,
Analyst attention, Commercial credit.