Green Finance Without Green Returns? Carbon Compliance, Production Scale and European Steel Export Competitiveness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20963926Keywords:
Green Finance, Green Bonds, Steel Exports, Panel Quantile Regression, Export Competitiveness, Carbon IntensityAbstract
Purpose – This study examines whether country-level green finance, measured by green bond issuances, translates into measurable improvements in the export performance of the European steel sector, one of the most carbon-intensive and trade exposed industries under the EU's evolving climate regulatory architecture.
Design/data/methodology – The analysis covers 17 European economies over 2015–2024 (N = 170, balanced panel). Panel Quantile Regression (PQR) is employed to capture distributional heterogeneity across the full range of export performance, from the weakest to the most competitive exporters.
Findings –Green bond issuances exert no statistically significant association with steel exports at any quantile, interpreted through a structural temporal mismatch hypothesis. Production capacity is the dominant export driver, with a monotonically declining elasticity from 2.33 at Q10 to 0.75 at Q90. Carbon intensity consistently depresses exports, with a sharply amplified relationship at Q90. Mean-based OLS estimators reverse the sign of the production-export relationship, confirming that quantile regression is a methodological necessity in structurally heterogeneous panels.
Originality/value – This study provides original quantile panel evidence on the green finance, export competitiveness nexus for a major energy intensive sector, addressing a gap at the intersection of sustainable finance, trade economics, and industrial policy. The theorization of the temporal mismatch mechanism, the documented OLS sign reversal, and the differentiated quantile-based policy recommendations constitute contributions to both the green finance literature and the economics of EU carbon market architecture.
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