Economic effects of green bond market development in Asian economies

Purpose - In the recent decades, the green projects have suffered from serious lack of investment, highlighting the major role of green financing to attract private investors to these projects. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the economic impacts of green bond (GB) market in 37 Asian economies. Design/methodology/approach - To empirically analyze the impacts of issued GBs on different macroeconomic variables of 37 Asian countries, the co-integration and causality approaches are employed to analyze the data for the period of 2002–2018. Findings - The primary findings indicated the presence of a unidirectional causal direction running from inflation rate, inward FDI, governance indicator, and human development index to issued GBs for the sample of Asian economies that were analyzed. Regarding Group I (higher and upper-middle income Asian countries), there are bi-directional relationships between the GB and other variables, indicating that the policies of governments in each variable influence other variables, whereas for Group II (low and lower-middle income Asian countries), there are uni-directional relationships running from HDI, governance indicator, and inflation rate to GBs, but only bi-directional causal relationships. Practical implications - In Asian economies with a lower per capita income, implementing policies to enhance the efficiency of issued GBs so that they have a positive impact on economic activities and human development may be an appropriate strategy with major policy implications. In this way, financial system improvement, financing rural electrification and the transition to electric vehicles through GBs are recommended, while for the case of high- and upper-middle-income economies in Asia, simplifying capital flows from abroad to the GB market can be considered a practical policy. Originality/value - This study contributes to current green finance research by studying the effects of several variables on the GB market for the instance of Asian countries with low and lower-middle incomes, as well as high-upper middle incomes.