A comparative analysis of spreads : green bonds versus corporate bonds

• Autor(a) principal: Feliciano, Sérgio Henrique Pereira
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/39521
• topic: Climate change; Green bonds; Spreads; Environmental social and governance (ESG); Corporate social responsibility (CSR); Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Green bonds are financial instruments that are becoming progressively more popular. This study investigates the volume of green bonds issued by nonfinancial firms in eurozone countries during the period 2013 and 2021 and makes a comparative analysis of their characteristics with those of traditional bonds. The main objective of this academic research is to contribute to the studies related to green bonds and investigate if these financial instruments have lower spreads when compared to corporate bonds with the same characteristics. We use a sample of 233 green bonds and 2,610 corporate bonds obtained from DCM Analytics database to perform this analysis, controlling for other variables that affect the spread, such as macroeconomic factors and contractual characteristics. The results suggest that green bonds do not have lower spreads than comparable corporate bonds, arguing that green bonds are not considered a financial source with lower borrowing costs. Results also show that credit riskrelated variables are those that have the strongest impact on bond spreads, for both green and traditional corporate bonds.