Green Finance
Paper Session
Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)
- Chair: Matias Ossandon Busch, CEMLA
Information about Climate Transition Risk and Bank Lending
Abstract
Is there any evidence for climate transition risks being priced in syndicated corporate loans? Empirical evidence shows a role for bank specialization in pricing climate transition risk. However, this role varies across geographies, and the regulatory and technological aspects of climate transition measured using firm-level GHG emissions and discussions about climate regulations and ‘green’ technological development in earnings calls. Moreover, bank specialization does not necessarily translate into higher lending rates for negatively exposed firms after a major geoclimatic shock to the oil and gas markets. To explain the role of bank specialization as a source of heterogeneity in costs of private information acquisition, I construct a theoretical model of imperfect and costly screening in a competitive bank lending structure, in which I allow for non-Bayesian belief updates by the banks to public signals about the borrowers’ exposure to transition risk. Conditional on the signals from screening, the expected interest rates in the equilibrium are higher for borrowers for whom the public signal points towards higher vulnerability to a transition risk shock. However, the interest rate differential between more and less exposed borrowers is smaller when banks under-react more to public information. Optimal private information acquisition steeply increases when banks under-react more in response to public information, but only when they are sufficiently Bayesian. Furthermore, the increase in private information acquisition with under-reaction increases much more steeply during periods of higher credit risk. These results are especially relevant for understanding the dynamics of bank financing of carbon-intensive versus relatively carbon-efficient firms during times of lower average credit risk and higher scepticism to public information about green technologies and policies.How Climate Change Shapes Bank Lending: Evidence from Portfolio Reallocation
Abstract
We document how bank lending has changed in response to climate change by analyzing changes in bank loan portfolios since 2012. Using supervisory data providing loan-level portfolios of the largest U.S. banks, we find that banks significantly reduced lending to areas more impacted by climate change starting around 2015. Using flood risk and wildfire risk as proxies for climate risk, we estimate a one standard deviation increase in climate risk reduces county-level balances in banks' portfolios by up to 4.7 percent between 2014 and 2020 in counties with large loan balances. The aggregate trend masks considerable heterogeneity. Banks reduced lending more for the riskier loans (HELOCs, CRE) and to borrowers with high credit risk. However, banks expanded lending, including riskier loans, to borrowers with the lowest credit risk in areas more impacted by climate change.Discussant(s)
Artashes Karapetyan
,
ESSEC Business School
Eva Schliephake
,
Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics
Hans Degryse
,
KU Leuven
JEL Classifications
- G2 - Financial Institutions and Services
- G1 - General Financial Markets