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Heard the News? Environmental Policy and Clean Investments

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  • Joelle Noailly; Laura Nowzohour; Matthias van den Heuvel

Abstract

We build a novel news-based index of US environmental policy and examine how it relates to clean investments. Extracting text from ten leading US newspapers over the last four decades, we use text-mining techniques to develop a granular index measuring the salience of US environmental policy (EnvP) over the 1981-2019 period. We develop further a set of additional measures, namely an index of sentiment on environmental policy, as well as various topic-specific indices. We validate our index by showing that it correctly captures trends and peaks in the evolution of US environmental policy and that it has a meaningful association with clean investments, in line with environmental regulations supporting growing opportunities for clean markets. In firm-level estimations, we find that the salience of environmental policy in newspapers is associated with a greater probability of cleantech startups receiving venture capital (VC) funding and reduced stock returns for high-emissions firms most exposed to environmental regulations. At the aggregate level, we find in VAR models that a shock in our news-based index of renewable energy policy is associated with an increase in the number of clean energy VC deals and in the assets under management of the main benchmark clean energy exchange-traded fund. Overall, our EnvP index provides a lot of substantial information on environmental policy and can help assist the policy and financial community in understanding how these regulations are perceived by investors — providing many avenues for future research.

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  • Joelle Noailly; Laura Nowzohour; Matthias van den Heuvel, 2021. "Heard the News? Environmental Policy and Clean Investments," CIES Research Paper series 70-2021, Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute.
  • Handle: RePEc:gii:ciesrp:cies_rp_70
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    Cited by:

    1. Campiglio, Emanuele & Lamperti, Francesco & Terranova, Roberta, 2024. "Believe me when I say green! Heterogeneous expectations and climate policy uncertainty," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    2. Joelle Noailly, 2022. "Directing innovation towards a low-carbon future," WIPO Economic Research Working Papers 72, World Intellectual Property Organization - Economics and Statistics Division.
    3. Loyson, Philipe & Luijendijk, Rianne & van Wijnbergen, Sweder, 2023. "The pricing of climate transition risk in Europe's equity market," CEPR Discussion Papers 18289, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Joëlle Noailly ; Laura Nowzohour; Matthias van den Heuvel, 2022. "Does Environmental Policy Uncertainty Hinder Investments Towards a Low-Carbon Economy?," CIES Research Paper series 74-2022, Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute.
    5. Matthias van den Heuvel & David Popp, 2022. "The Role of Venture Capital and Governments in Clean Energy: Lessons from the First Cleantech Bubble," CESifo Working Paper Series 9684, CESifo.
    6. Philippe Loyson & Rianne Luijendijk & Sweder van Wijnbergen, 2023. "The pricing of climate transition risk in Europe’s equity market," Working Papers 788, DNB.
    7. Wang, Lu & Wu, Jiangbin & Cao, Yang & Hong, Yanran, 2022. "Forecasting renewable energy stock volatility using short and long-term Markov switching GARCH-MIDAS models: Either, neither or both?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    8. Mohammad Enamul Hoque & Sourav Batabyal, 2022. "Carbon Futures and Clean Energy Stocks: Do They Hedge or Safe Haven against the Climate Policy Uncertainty?," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-11, September.
    9. Angelico, Cristina, 2024. "The green transition and firms' expectations on future prices: Survey evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 519-543.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy
    • C55 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Large Data Sets: Modeling and Analysis
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity

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