Abstract: China announced the establishment of green finance reform and innovation pilot zones in 2017. Does the establishment of the pilot zone contribute to enterprise green technological innovation? And through which pathways? Based on green patent data of China's A-share listed companies during 2008-2019, this paper adopts the difference-in-differences (DID) approach to investigate the above-mentioned questions. Results show that the establishment of the pilot zones significantly promotes both the quantity and quality of enterprise green technological innovation. After a series of robustness checks, the conclusions are still consistent. Dynamic analyses demonstrate that the pilot zones have a long-term promotion effect on high-quality green technological innovation. Further analyses find that the pilot zones could affect both the quantity and quality of green technological innovation through alleviating financing constraints. In contrast, the pilot zones only affect the quality of green technological innovation through reinforcing environmental regulation. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that the promotion effect of the pilot zones differs across firms with different ownership structures, in industries with varying intensities of pollution, and in various types of industries. These findings provide empirical evidence and policy implications for China to improve the green finance policy system.

Key words: green finance, reform and innovation pilot zone, green technology innovation, financing constraints, environmental regulation