آیا تلاش در صرفه جویی انرژی باعث افزایش ارزش های شرکت می شود؟ شواهدی از بازار سهام چین

This paper studies the impact of energy-saving efforts on firm value, using the carbon emission rights trading scheme (CERTS) of China as an exogenous shock. The results showed that the CERTS increases the market value of energy-related firms; moreover, the energy-saving efforts of firms further influence their market value and investor reaction. Energy-related firms improve their market value and gain benefits by strengthening their energy-saving activities. This paper offers an important policy implication that the Government should enact appropriate policies to improve the energy-saving activities of firms, especially in the energy industry.

With its rapid growth, China has become the second largest economy in the world after the US. However, the current environmental problems in China have also aroused public concern worldwide. Energy saving has become one of the most important issues in the agenda of the Chinese Government because China has been the second largest producer of carbon emissions in the world for years, outranking even the US since 2007. China's large population, coal-fueled economy, and factories producing international products have all combined to produce considerable amounts of absolute emissions (Zhang, 2010). In response, the Chinese Government has enforced policies on environmental protection and explored industrial policies that aim to promote industrial upgrading and energy conservation. China has eliminated or cut export tax rebates for 2831 exported items since July 2007 (Zhang, 2008); for example, the export tax rebates for 553 “highly energy-consuming, highly polluting, and resource-intensive” products, such as cement, fertilizer and non-ferrous metal, were completely eliminated. Moreover, ahead of climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, the Government announced its first firm target of limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by reducing carbon intensity in 2005 by 40% to 45% before 2020. The Government has also approved a pilot carbon emission rights trading scheme (CERTS) in seven provinces (i.e., Beijing, Tianjing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hubei, Guangdong, and Shenzhen) to reduce carbon emissions. Following the two largest emission rights trading schemes, namely, the US Acid Rain Program and the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), the CERTS of China aims to achieve emission reduction targets while minimizing costs. Given that the Chinese Government has intensified its environmental protection policies, energy-related firms that exert efforts to save energy also enhance their public reputation, especially among investors (Russo and Fouts, 1997). The CERTS enables emission rights to be traded and considered firm assets (Point Carbon, 2004). Moreover, emission rights influence firm profitability (Peri and Baldi, 2011) and value in the stock market (Veith et al., 2009). Owing to the importance of the CERTS in the energy industry, its effect on energy-related firms and the effect of firms' energy-saving activities on investor reaction warrant further investigation. Analyzing these relations may shed light on the policy and on the effect of energy-saving activities on asset returns, market reaction, and shareholder wealth. Thus, the current research has important implications for regulators, listed firms, and participants in the capital market. In this paper, we use the CERTS of China introduced on October 29, 2011, as the springboard for examining the abovementioned issues. Our sample consists of all firms in the seven pilot-scheme regions listed in the Chinese stock market. We use a sub-index of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) index in China to measure the efforts of firms on energy-saving and related activities. This CSR index issued by the Shanghai National Accounting Institute (SNAI) in 2008 is the first available index used for Chinese listed firms. One sub-index of this CSR index is energy saving. We then obtain stock price, size-weighted stock market return, and other control variables to estimate investor reaction to exogenous shock, using data from the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) Database, a widely used database for research on Chinese listed firms. We also employ event studies to investigate the impact of the CERTS, an exogenous shock, on listed energy-related firms as well as the effects of the firms' energy-saving efforts on investor response. We conduct the empirical analysis as described below. First, we use event studies to assess the impact of the CERTS on the financial performance of energy-related firms. Regressions of cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) on the dummy variable for energy-related firms indicate that the event has significant positive impact on the financial performance of such firms. Second, we investigate the influence of energy-saving efforts on investor behavior by using a regression of CAR on the interaction between the dummy variable for the energy industry and the levels of energy-saving efforts of listed companies. Third, we repeat the above regression to further explore the difference between the two types of firms in our sample, namely, state-owned (SOEs) and non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs). Energy-saving efforts more significantly affect the value increments of energy-related SOEs than non-SOEs. As a result, investors may consider energy-related SOEs to have more emission rights or a higher quota; thus, they are more likely to have spare allowances for trading with other firms than non-SOEs. This perception increases the value of such SOEs. We contribute to the literature in two ways. First, we assess whether the exogenous event CERTS affects energy-related firms. To our knowledge, this paper is the first to investigate the CERTS and its effect on related Chinese firms. This is also the first study to use energy-saving efforts, a sub-index of CSR, as a variable indicating that investors in capital markets significantly react to the energy-saving efforts of a firm upon recognizing the importance of such efforts. Our results offer the Government timely empirical evidence that can provide regulators critical insights, through which they can issue appropriate policies on enhancing firms' energy-saving activities, ultimately protecting the environment. Our findings also shed light on the effect of energy-saving activities on the energy-related firms themselves. Investors regard the energy-saving activities of such companies as important factors in their investment decisions. Investor trades affect firm price; thus, energy-related firms should strengthen their efforts to save energy, decrease operation costs, and improve their reputation. This paper is organized into sections. The next section reviews related literature and presents testable hypotheses. Section 3 describes the research methodology and data sources. The empirical results are presented in Section 4 and the conclusion is presented in Section 5.

This paper presents the effects of the CERTS on energy-related firms and of the levels of energy-saving effort on investor behaviors in the energy industry. The CERTS of China is the first institution that allows emission rights to be traded using a marketable method. The trading scheme affects energy-related firms. Moreover, using an energy-saving effort score (i.e., a sub-index from CSR) enables us to detect the significant effects of energy-saving efforts on investor behaviors. Thus, energy-saving efforts can influence investors' trading behaviors at least within the event period. This study offers three important policy implications. First, energy-related firms can obtain excess returns within the event periods. Firms can sell their unused emission rights to obtain profit because the trading scheme allows this (Point Carbon, 2004). As expected, the trading scheme benefits energy-related firms. Thus, the Chinese Government should construct and develop the CERTS as soon as possible not only in the pilot regions but also nationwide. The trading scheme can be used as a marketable strategy to protect the environment. The CERTS can also be used as a platform through which the Government can easily supervise firms and the public. Second, investors in China's energy industry react positively to firms' energy-saving efforts. Thus, the Chinese Government should release appropriate polices to strengthen energy-saving laws and enact new and stricter laws on energy saving or environmental protection. Furthermore, policies along this channel can effectively control pollution. For energy-related firms themselves, energy-saving activities can improve their reputation (Russo and Fouts, 1997). Investors use “voting by foot” for the related firms because investors refrain from holding stocks from pollution or sin firms (Hong and Kacperczyk, 2009; Liu et al., 2010). We suggest that supervisors and monitors implement appropriate policies and efficient mechanisms to strengthen firms' incentives to participate in environmental protection activities, especially in terms of energy saving. Meanwhile, firms must strengthen their efforts to save energy in order to decrease cost and improve firm reputation. Third, our findings also determined the difference between SOEs and non-SOEs. The market value of energy-related SOEs is significantly affected by their energy-saving efforts. However, for energy-related non-SOEs, more energy-saving efforts do not necessarily attract investors. This difference may stem from the fact that SOEs can easily obtain more emission rights than non-SOEs. Thus, we suggest that the Chinese Government and the trading scheme treat firms more fairly and help all firms improve their energy-saving and other related activities. This paper has three limitations. First, we only focus on China's listed firms. Although we obtain significant results in this study, our findings should be cautiously applied to non-listed firms and to other countries. Second, since the CERTS is a new policy, we cannot yet investigate its long-term effect to related firms yet. Therefore, future studies can be conducted in two ways: (a) by offering international or non-listed firms facts, the effect of the trading scheme and the energy-saving effort on firm performance can be evaluated in a more general sense; and (b) with more time-series data in the future, we can further investigate how the trading scheme and energy-saving effort affect firm performance in the long run. The third limitation is that China started the CERTS only on October 29, 2011. Thus, using only 2011 data to conduct this study may not account for the effects in the long term, although market reaction includes investor expectation of the future. We leave this issue to be investigated when the data are already available.