Drivers of green bond issuance and new evidence on the “greenium”

Abstract This paper examines whether a premium for green bonds, called “greenium”, found in previous studies, exists primary and secondary bond markets. Using universe of about 2000 180,000 non-green bonds from 650 international issuers, we apply both propensity score matching coarsened exact to determine sample conventional that is most similar the bonds. We find have larger issue sizes lower rated on average, compared The estimates show yield is, 15–20 basis points than markets, thus “greenium” exists.