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The impact of green finance on sustainable development: an investigation into national ESG performance

Mingbo Zheng et al.

Journal of Applied Economics2025https://doi.org/10.1080/15140326.2025.2528672article
AJG 1ABDC B
Weight
0.64

Abstract

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practice is essential to the achievement of sustainable development goals. Improving macro ESG performance requires lots of financial resource input, while whether green finance exhibits critical effect on national ESG performance has yet to be explored. This study employs a panel fixed effects model and panel data from 103 countries over the period from 2000 to 2020 to explore the role of green finance in national ESG performance. The findings show that green finance is conducive to enhanced national ESG performance. The heterogeneity test reveals those nations with higher levels of financial development, better institutional quality, and faster ICT development experience higher growth of national ESG performance from green finance. Specifically, green finance contributes to the development of green technology, and hence leads to improvement on ESG performance, while the evidence cannot support the mechanism of upgrading industrial structure. The research offers valuable policy reference for governments across different nations seeking to accelerate sustainable development.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/15140326.2025.2528672

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@article{mingbo2025,
  title        = {{The impact of green finance on sustainable development: an investigation into national ESG performance}},
  author       = {Mingbo Zheng et al.},
  journal      = {Journal of Applied Economics},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/15140326.2025.2528672},
}

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The impact of green finance on sustainable development: an investigation into national ESG performance

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Evidence weight

0.64

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.67 × 0.4 = 0.27
M · momentum0.95 × 0.15 = 0.14
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.