Abstract
Green bonds are playing a growing role in financing climate change mitigation and adaptation, yet global shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine introduce uncertainty to green bond issuance. This study examines the effects of these shocks on green bond issuance using annual firm-level data for 776 green bonds issuers across 49 economies from 2017 to 2023. Using multilevel mixed-effects probit and linear models, we find that the Russian invasion of Ukraine significantly reduced the probability of green bond issuance, whereas the COVID-19 pandemic increased it. Neither shock significantly affected green bond issuance volume relative to total bond issuance.These findings suggest that while global shocks alter firms' issuance decisions, the overall market size is not significantly affected, highlighting the importance of considerations for policymakers and investors. These results have survived the robustness check.