Lecturer and graduate student of the Finance Department of the St. Petersburg Higher School of Economics spoke at the International Conference on Sustainable Finance

Olga Alekseeva, a lecturer and graduate student at the HSE Department of Finance in Saint Petersburg, spoke at the 2025 Massey Sustainable Finance Conference (MSFC2025), which took place on October 31 — November 1, 2025 in Nanjing (China). The conference was organized by Massey University (New Zealand) in collaboration with Nanjing University of Finance & Economics (China) and brought together leading researchers of sustainable finance, regulators and practitioners.

As part of the scientific program, Olga Alekseeva presented the report "Sustainable Debt, Sustainable Returns? The Impact of Green Bonds on Firm Performance in China", dedicated to how the issuance of green bonds is related to the profitability of companies in China. The study closes the gap in the literature using a combination of Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences: issuers of green and "ordinary" bonds from 2016-2019 are compared, then the dynamics of financial indicators is assessed on an extended observation window, which increases the reliability of causal conclusions and takes into account the deferred effect of "green" financing. This design was chosen against the background of the rapid growth of the Chinese green bond market and its institutional maturity, which makes the context representative for testing the financial effects of sustainable debt. Empirical results show a statistically significant positive effect of issuing green bonds on profitability: after the issue, issuing firms demonstrate an increase in ROA and ROE compared to a comparable control group; at the same time, financial performance monitoring confirms that the observed increase is due specifically to "green" financing, and not to differences in the fundamental characteristics of companies. 

In addition, Olga acted as a debater on the work "Go Green or Go Rich? — Future Investors’ Choice in an Experimental Asset Market", performed by researchers from Xi'an Jiaotong–Liverpool University (China). A laboratory experiment examines the behavior of future investors in a two-asset market. The aim is to assess whether incentives in the form of donations when trading "green" assets and income taxes on "brown" assets lead to a shift in demand in favor of sustainable instruments; the authors note a pronounced choice of "green" securities and a more cautious attitude towards "brown" ones. As a debater, Olga clarified the methodological parameters and discussed the portability of the results to real markets with a different demographic and professional profile of investors.

 

Photo: provided by the organizing committee of MSFC2025