No. 1514 - (Green)washing the trust: climate information and banking policies
The paper proposes a methodology to identify firms engaged in greenwashing, that is, firms that claim to be more sustainable than they actually are. It then assesses the potential impact of this practice on the price and volume of bank loans, also following changes in the stance of monetary policy.
Firms are defined as potential greenwashers if they report low emissions while providing low-reliability environmental disclosures; this identification is complemented by textual information extracted from corporate websites and press articles. Over the period 2019-21, greenwashing firms are estimated to have benefited on average from lower bank lending rates, with no significant effects on the quantity of credit. Following the 2022-23 monetary tightening, this advantage diminished and eventually disappeared.
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06 February 2026
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