Green Bond Influence on Cumulative Abnormal Return in The Swedish Stock Market : A Study of Publicly Listed Swedish Construction and RealEstate Companies

Abstract: Addressing environmental issues has been a top priority in recent years all over the world. There are several options on how to address this problem also from a financial perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate how green bond issuance announcement impacts publicly traded stock prices through cumulative abnormal return (CAR) perspective. We focused our scope only to the Swedish market. Theory is based on three different models: the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), the market model, and the market return model, which all have been applied also in previous studies. Several previous studies indicate that there is a positive CAR around the bond announcement date. In our case findings based on all three models were, that there in fact is evidence of CAR in the Swedish market at different event windows. The strongest relationships were found in event windows five days before the event date and up to twenty days post-event date. These results could be an indicator, that investors are valuating green bonds positively, and therefore for companies it might be beneficial to engage in more environmentally friendly project financing.