Professor Zhang Qunzi’s Team Paper Published Online in Journal of International Money and Finance

Recently, the latest research findings Carbon risk and corporate maturity mismatch, co-authored by Professor Zhang Qunzi, Postdoctoral Wang Xiaoxiao from the School of Economics, Shandong University, Professor Wang Xuewu from the University of Delaware, and Professor Huang Ming from Fudan University, was published online in Journal of International Money and Finance, a prestigious journal in finance.

This paper studies the impact of carbon risk on corporate investment and debt maturity mismatch, and finds that carbon risk exacerbates corporate maturity mismatch. The potential channel is that carbon risk increases debt default risk, reduces the scale and maturity of bank loans, and increases venture capital, which prompts companies to rely more on short-term financing to support long-term investment. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive impact of carbon risk on maturity mismatch is stronger if companies are characterized by small scale, poor financial performance, high leverage ratio, less cash holdings or less green innovation. The study finds that when carbon risk is high, maturity mismatch reduces agency costs and promotes corporate performance. Therefore, carbon risk-driven maturity mismatch plays an optimized supervisory role in corporate resource allocation and guides companies on how to maintain financial stability when responding to changes in the external environment. The results remain unchanged after a series of robustness tests.

Zhang Qunzi is the Vice Dean, Professor and doctoral supervisor of the Department of Finance, School of Economics, Shandong University. She is the host of the National Natural Science Foundation for Excellent Young Scholars, a High-end Financial Talent of Shandong Province, a Distinguished Young and Middle-aged Scholar and Qilu Young Scholar of Shandong University. She is the person in charge of the "Double Leaders" Teacher Party Branch Studio in national colleges and universities, and the person in charge of Corporate Finance, a provincial-level first-class undergraduate course of Shandong Province.

Wang Xiaoxiao is a Key Funded Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Economics, Shandong University. Her research fields include fund markets and corporate finance. She has published many papers in international journals such as Journal of Banking & Finance, Journal of International Money and Finance, International Review of Financial Analysis, International Review of Economics and Finance, and Pacific-Basin Finance Journal.

Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jimonfin.2024.103213