Econometric analysis reveals that anti-corruption campaigns promote corporate green innovation in Chinese firms, indicating that cleaner governance fosters sustainable business practices.
Green innovation (GI) drives corporate sustainability. We use firm-level data from 2009 to 2018 to examine how China’s anti-corruption (AC) campaign, initiated in 2013, affects corporate GI. The AC campaign promotes GI. This effect persists through multiple robustness checks, causal forest analysis, and double machine learning estimation. The effect is stronger for large firms, low-pollution industries, resource-intensive industries, technology-intensive enterprises, and firms in developed regions. Intellectual property protection, government digitalisation, and corporate digital transformation amplify this effect. The AC campaign enhances GI by alleviating financing constraints, strengthening environmental regulations, improving investment efficiency, and reducing transaction costs. AC-driven increases in GI also reduce corporate risk and enhance firm value.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Zhou et al. (2026) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: