Associate Professor Xiaohang Ren, a researcher of the Base, has published a collaborative paper titled "Economic freedom and corporate carbon emissions: International evidence" in Business Strategy and the Environment.

BSE is a leading sustainable business journal that aims to promote the understanding of green business strategies to improve the natural environment.

Abstract: A global consensus exists emphasizing the need to curtail carbon emissions to preserve the environment and promote sustainable development. In this study, we investigate the impact of economic freedom on corporate carbon emissions. We show that economic freedom negatively impacts corporate carbon emissions based on a panel dataset of 2,932 companies from 24 countries between 2004 and 2019. We also identify the underlying mechanisms involving resource utilization and industrial agglomeration. Additionally, we provide compelling evidence that carbon emissions reduction also boosts future economic performance. We also find that the effect of economic freedom on corporate carbon emissions is evident in companies facing elevated financial distress risks, high tax burdens, low financing constraints, and where the CEO serves on the board of directors. Moreover, we find that the escalation in economic freedom exhibits a notably stronger restraining effect on corporate carbon emissions in developed countries relative to developing nations. Overall, our findings contribute to a robust theoretical framework and provide valuable policy insights for the global effort to reduce carbon emissions.

Keywords: corporate carbon emission, economic freedom, economic performance, environmental performance

Link：https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.3920

Teacher profile

Xiaohang Ren is a specially appointed associate professor at the Business School of Central South University, a highly cited Chinese scholar of Elsevier, and a top 2% scientist in the world. He mainly focuses on research in energy finance, financial risks, and financial measurement. He has published more than 100 papers in authoritative domestic and foreign journals such as Journal of the American Statistical Association, Transportation Research Part A, Energy Economics, Quantitative Finance, Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, International Review of Financial Analysis, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Business Strategy and the Environment, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Applied Energy, Resources Policy, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Review, Energy, Journal of Management Sciences in China (English Edition), Systems Engineering - Theory & Practice, and Chinese Journal of Management Science. Among them, more than 30 papers are ESI hot articles or highly cited papers. He serves as the lead editor of Sustainable Communities (Taylor & Francis), associate editor of Humanities & Social Sciences Communications (the only social science and humanities journal affiliated with Nature), and guest editor of SSCI journals such as Climate Change Economics, Economic Change and Restructuring.