Climate risk and trade credit financing: Evidence from China

Abstract

Using A‐share listed firms from 2009 to 2020 as a research sample, this study constructs firm‐level climate risk through textual analysis to examine whether and how corporate climate risk affect trade credit financing. The empirical results show that increased climate risk inhibits the level of trade credit financing of firms. The results are more prominent for those enterprises without government‐enterprise linkages and firms in cities with high levels of environmental regulation intensity and low levels of city trust. Furthermore, mechanism tests suggest that operational risk and information asymmetry are the main channels affecting the above relationships. In addition, we find that the negative impact of climate risk on trade credit financing will weaken firm value. This paper enriches the research on the impact of climate risk on microeconomic agents and provides new perspectives to alleviate corporate financing constraints.