Carbon Emissions and the Bank-Lending Channel

Organized by the Private Sector Development Research Network

Hosted by the International Finance Corporation (IFC)

Friday, 31st Oct 2025 from 9-10am EST

ABOUT THE SEMINAR

This seminar will explore how firm-level carbon emissions affect bank lending and, through this channel, real outcomes in a sample of global firms with syndicated loans. The paper uses bank-level commitments to decarbonization to proxy for changes in banks’ green preferences and, via these commitments, shocks to firms with previous credit from these banks. Firms with higher carbon footprint previously borrowing from committed banks subsequently receive less bank credit. Affected firms also lower their total debt, leverage, size, and real investments, and increase their liquid assets. Key findings include no improvement in environmental performance of brown firms, but only evidence consistent with firms’ greenwashing.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Marcin Kacperczyk (Imperial College London)

Professor of Finance 

Marcin Kacperczyk is a Professor of Finance at Imperial College London with research interests in the areas of climate finance, financial intermediation, financial stability, and information economics. He is a Research Associate at the Center for Economic Policy Research, research fellow at ECGI, and the managing editor of the Review of Finance. Marcin’s work has been published in leading academic journals and widely covered by media, such as CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, WSJ, FT, NYT, Business Week, U.S. News, and Washington Post. He is a past holder of the European Research Council research grant and former President of the European Finance Association.

Details of Dr. Kacperczyk‘s work can be found here.