Green bond issuance and value creation for stockholders: evidence from Italy

This paper investigates the value creation for the stockholders through the analysis of the stock Italian market reaction when green bonds are issued in the market. Announcement data for issued green bonds have been hand-collected and the empirical analysis has been conducted with the aim of evaluating the difference in stock returns between green bond issuers and not issuers. Stocks have first been filtered for the market returns by capital asset pricing model (CAPM). Then, a nearest neighbours’ approach has been used for matching purposes. Results show that the issuance of green bonds did not affect significantly the remuneration required by stockholders. Our research is directed to academics, practitioners and companies.