Bibliometric Analysis of Green Finance and Climate Change in Post-Paris Agreement Era

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

ibliometric Analysis of Green Finance and Climate Change in Post-Paris Agreement Era

I like the idea and execution of the bibliometric analysis of the literature on green finance and climate, especially in light of the growing awareness on environmental degradation and its impact on economic activities. Such an analysis give credit to researchers in this key filed and importantly provides a current view on the existing topics and method applied and the path for future research that should addressed.

Having said that, I have a few comments that must be addressed to reconsider my recommendation. They are as follows:

1-The abstract should be revised by (1) eliminating the sentence “the literature reveals multiple definitions of what green finance means” and keeping the focus on “overview of green finance after the Paris Agreement by adopting a bibliometric analysis of the selected literature”, and (2) better highlighting the main results and implications of the analysis.

2-I wonder why the authors did not consider other important key terms such “clean energy”, “green bonds”, “climate stock indices”, “climate risk”, or climate uncertainty”.

3-Why not showing the highly cited papers

4-The authors argue that the finance and economic literature (i.e. journals in the field of finance and economics) is not so rich in studies on the green finance, green energy, and climate risk. In this regard, I suggest considering the below published papers in your revised paper given that they are very related and relevant to the bibliometric analysis swhich should be comprehensive:

a)     Hedging climate risk. Financial Analysts Journal, Vol 72 No. 3, 13-32.

b)    Hedging strategies of green assets against dirty energy assets. Energies, Vol. 12 No. 13, 3141.

c)     Climate change events and stock market returns. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 1-26.

d)    Extreme return connectedness and its determinants between clean/green and dirty energy. Energy Economics, Vol. 96, 105017.

e)     The effects of the Paris climate agreement on stock markets: evidence from the German stock market. Applied Economics, Vol 51 No. 57, 6068-6075.

f)     Commodity Market Risks and Green Investments: Evidence from India. Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 318, 128523.

g)    Climate policy uncertainty and the price dynamics of green and brown energy stocks. Finance Research Letters, Vol. 47, 102740.

h)    Climate Bond, Stock, Gold, and Oil Markets: Dynamic Correlations and Hedging Analyses during the COVID-19 Outbreak. Resources Policy, Vol. 74, 102265.

i)      Are investors sensitive to climate-related transition and physical risks? Evidence from global stock markets. Research in International Business and Finance, Vol. 62, 101710.

j)      Asymmetric effects of climate policy uncertainty, geopolitical risk, and crude oil prices on clean energy prices. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-23020-w

5-More ink should be spent on the research gaps and the agenda of future research.

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

thank you for your article. The investigation is interesting and noteworthy. I attached a pdf-version with comments if you find that helpful for further revisions.

I cannot not recommend a publication before you have not addressed or refuted the following major issues:

§  Introduction: Literature Review

I assume that there have been already some meta-studies on the broader issue of Green or Sustainable Finance (you yourself cite one study at the end). Please cite, and describe, 2-3 important studies if you can find them. If you are convinced that there are none; clearly state that (and maybe why) this is a research gap.

§  Introduction: Research Questions

I fail to understand how your research questions are distinguished and how they are explicitly referenced in your discussion. This is in line with my impression that you sometimes fail to also distinguish between geographical regions of interest versus geographical origin of authors as well as journal focus versus discipline (for example; I am very sure that there are numerous “economic” studies in J Sustainability on the subject).

§  Introduction: Focus on Developing Countries (esp. African Regions)

I agree that green investments are mostly looked at from a Global North perspective and think that your focus in the introduction on developing countries is well warranted. I also think that this is, even among meta-studies, a research gap that needs to be investigated. However, looking at your research questions, keywords, and methods, I am not convinced that you a) wanted to investigate that at all and b) whether you were successful in doing so.

§  Material and Methods: Search Words

You describe that your search words were “informed by literature”, but do not cite literature or argue how these keywords represent the result of this process. I, for one, was surprised that you did not include e.g., “Impact Investing”, “Blended-Finance”, “ESG-loans” and similar terms – given that you highlighted developing countries before. I was also surprised that you did not search for “Sustainable Finance”. This is particular interesting, since your later results revealed a prevalence for this term even from a sample without it. Please clearly describe why and how you came up with your search terms and how this affected your sample. Did you, for example, try out other combination as a form of sensitivity analyses? If not, this is, IMHO, also a major limitation of your study that needs to be discussed.

§  Material and Methods: Inclusion Criteria

You write: "The analysis was done based on the dataset for the published articles collected after a rigorous and systematic inclusion and exclusion criteria."

Apart from the grammar issues; I do not find any explanation on what the inclusion criteria were. The following section only seem to deal with exclusion rather than inclusion. Please clarify.

§  Material and Methods: Figure 1

Your figure does not depict clearly what you actually did. For one, I as a reader, do not understand the purpose of two different columns and how the arrows at the top and bottom relate to the process, since only the middle arrow contains any information. I recommend to re-work the figure in the context of your intentions (what do you want to explain/show to the reader?). In addition, some depictions are missing IMHO (e.g., there are no data limitations         ?), while others are phrased in a unusual manner (e.g., "Result Conclusion").

§  Results: Table 1

You highlight later on that documents with finance/economic studies as well as studies by authors from developing countries are underrepresented. I assume that you have developed metrics for these criteria that could, and maybe should, be included here.

§  Results: Attraction of scientific research

You state that the conferences in Paris, Addis Ababa and Vision (two of which are not referenced in any manner) attracted scientific research on the subject. How do you come to the conclusion? Is there textual evidence from e.g. the abstracts for that? Or did you merely compare scientific output to points in time? Please explain how you come to your conclusion using the data and/or literature available to you. Otherwise, it is an assertation without evidence which should be phrased much more carefully (meaning that anyone could place events on your diagram and assert that scientific output is causally connected to an arbitrary selected "sustainability" event).

§  Results: Transition of Terms, and Figure 3

You write that: "Notably, the evolution of green financing seems to transition from ‘green bonds to climate finance’ to ‘sustainable finance’ and now ‘green finance’."

Of these terms, "green bonds" and "sustainable finance" were not part of your initial search pattern. By actively looking for these terms, it is very likely that your sample would have been larger and look different. It is therefore noteworthy, that despite this exclusion, "sustainable finance" still ranked 2nd place. Please take a bit more space to explain, what is shown here and to argue how you came to your conclusion.  I for example assume that "green finance" and "climate change" are sub-sets of "sustainable finance" for some authors (esp. within finance-research).           

§  Results: Field Plot Analysis

a) Please make clear, what you mean by "countries" in this regard. I suspect that you mean countries where the authors are situated or affiliated with? Or are these the actual countries that the research focuses on? If the first is the case (which I assume), keep this distinction in mind when interpreting these results later on.

b) Also you write: " The inter-links between countries and keywords 202 shows that most countries have focused their research on climate finance, climate change 203 and green finance." All of these are explicit search terms, are they not? Is it that surprising that the prevalence of these terms is higher than the prevalence of terms you did not search for when creating your sample? Please argue why this is significant nonetheless or how the non-exclusion some of these terms affected these results.

c) You mentioned different types of journals and at this point, you do not explain what this might mean or imply. This is fine for me.
However, you later conclude that certain disciplines are under-represented in your sample. Is this where this conclusion comes from? If that is the case, it is NOT enough to just give the reader the names of the most prevalent journals (esp. since the journal you are about to publish has "finance" and "investment" in its name). You have to show that the actual disciplines and/or methods used in your sample are more closely related to non-financial research (or as you later say: research without "financial techniques"). I assume that this is one of your arguments from the Co-Citation Analysis? If so, it is not made clear to the reader.

§  Results: Co-Citation & Co-Occurence Analysis

This seems to be the main part of your study and it is therefore more thouroughly explained. However, your explanations are still not sufficient -- at least to a reader not fluent in your method. I have 2 questions here.

1. Where do the name of the clusters come from and what do they represent?

2. What does this mean? What is the information you want to convey to the reader?

§  Discussion: Industry 4.0

I have, so far, not heard of this connection. And given that you did not introduce the study in the introduction, i fail to understand how these subjects are connected. Please include this study into your introduction or take more space to explain how the events are correlated.

§  Discussion: Supplementing existing knowledge

You write: " To achieve this goal, we are confident to claim that more scientific research from the financial and economic perspective is needed to expand and supplement the existing knowledge base on green finance. More research from the economic and financial perspective are likely to build up the aspect of sustainability on green financing. Furthermore, green financing is essentially a matter of finance, and future research on this matter using financial techniques can add great value to the existing literature."

It is always good to have more research of course, but I fail to see how your study provided the grounds for a "confident claim". I also fail to understand how more research from the "economic and financial perspective" is likely to "build-up the aspect of sustainability". I would argue that the opposite is the case, namely that we need more research from scholars in non-financial disciplines to better understand the "aspects of sustainability" of green finance.
I suggest to re-write this segment in order to provide a cohesive argument that is, in an ideal case, informed by your results as well as literature. You might very well have a convincing argument for that, but you do not show it here. However, I also wonder if this segment should be part of your discussion or rather your conclusion. These two section seem to have no clear distinction.

§  Discussion: Limitations?

Please write a section on the limitations of your research framework, your data and your methods.

§  Conclusion

So far, you have not convinced me that your conclusion follows from your data and your results. Neither did you provide sufficient secondary literature in cases where your research design cannot provide these insights alone. If you do so, I will gladly re-read your article and recommend a publication.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see attachement.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I am satisfied with the revised manuscript. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

thank you for your re-submission which greatly improved your paper.

I still do not agree with all of your conclusions and rebuttals. However, I think that you now present your arguments a lot better, so this is a matter of future discussion.

kind regards, and good luck

J.Teubler