Unraveling the Impact of Climate Policy Uncertainty on Corporate Default Risk : Evidence from China

This paper examines the effect of climate policy uncertainty on the default risk and documents a significant positive impact of China's CPU on the corporate default risk, and the impact sounds systematically aggravating with the increasing term structure of default investigation. Our research also reveals that R&D investment, ESG performance and firm financial constraints function as effective channels between climate policy uncertainty and firm default risk. Besides, higher local development and more managerial climate attention have mitigating effects on the relationship between CPU and corporate default risk, while state ownership has a positively intensifying moderation effect on the relationship