This paper exploits changes in financial subsidy programs to investigate their effect on female employment and firm performance. The identification strategy uses a quasi-experiment from a government policy change that eliminated financial support for exporting plants in the Chilean manufacturing industry. The difference-in-differences methodology shows that the policy change increased the share of total female employment by 3.3%, driven mainly by an increase of female workers in blue-collar occupations. In comparison, male labor experienced a drop of 4.4% in white-collar occupations in the treated plants relative to those in the control group. Plant total factor productivity (TFP) decreased due to the policy change, but both total gross output and sales rose approximately 7% on average. The paper explores two possible mechanisms to explain these findings: the technology adoption channel and changes in the gender composition of labor in the presence of a gender pay gap. The findings are consistent with the international trade and corporate finance literature on firm behavior under high market fixed and sunk costs.

Despite the rising number of green finance policies, the socioeconomic determinants shaping them remain largely unexamined. Drawing from the literature analysing the relationship between regulation, market development and institutional economics , we contend that green finance policy adoption is driven by both market-based and institutional factors. Using a survival analysis approach to understand the levers influencing green finance policy adoption across 188 countries from 2000 to 2019, we find that exposure to the fossil fuel industry predominantly drives the initial issuance of green finance policies. The positive effect of fossil fuel commercial financing on the adoption of green finance policies exists in countries with high and medium climate change awareness levels. Meanwhile, in countries with a low climate change awareness level, fossil fuel government subsidies drive green finance policy adoption. Our study also highlights the role of the financial industry as one of the key actors in the policy cycle of green finance policies via two pathways: (i) affecting financial stability through financing oil and gas companies on primary financial markets and (ii) developing a market for sustainable finance products.

We exploit staggered real estate transaction tax (RETT) hikes across German states to identify the effect on the growth rates of regional house prices and outstanding mortgage loans by all local German banks. The results show that a RETT hike by one percentage point reduces regional house prices by 3%–4%. Furthermore, IV-regressions yield that a 1 percentage point drop in regional house prices induced by a RETT increase leads to a 0.3% decline in regional mortgage lending, particularly among low-capitalized banks in rural regions.