Given the importance of climate change and the various ways to address it, this paper studies whether small firms that are environmentally committed are better able to access finance. It is important from a policy perspective to investigate if firms that care about climate change and sustainability are indeed being given all the incentives or if this is just a political discourse. The analysis is based on firm‐level data covering several years, which allows a temporal investigation as to whether environmental commitment is becoming an influential factor that affects access to finance. The results obtained highlight that although commitment to environmental issues is becoming more widespread in firms, they are still not important factors that affect access to external financing. The evidence regarding environmental commitment is mixed, since the paper also finds that several traditional factors continue to influence access to finance. Therefore, the providers of funds, especially banks should avoid paying lip‐service to their concern of the environment and abide by their discourse of facilitating access to finance, especially to firms having environmental commitments.

中文翻译：

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环境承诺是否可以改善融资渠道？来自毛里求斯小公司的证据


鉴于气候变化的重要性以及应对气候变化的各种方法，本文研究了致力于环保的小企业是否能够更好地获得融资。从政策角度来看，重要的是要调查关心气候变化和可持续发展的企业是否确实获得了所有激励措施，或者这是否只是一种政治言论。该分析基于涵盖数年的公司级数据，可以对环境承诺是否正在成为影响融资渠道的影响因素进行临时调查。获得的结果强调，尽管企业对环境问题的承诺越来越普遍，但它们仍然不是影响获得外部融资的重要因素。有关环境承诺的证据好坏参半，因为该论文还发现一些传统因素继续影响融资渠道。因此，资金提供者，特别是银行，应避免在口头上表达对环境的关注，并遵守其促进融资渠道的言论，特别是对有环保承诺的企业。