The impact of energy prices on firms’ financial and environmental performance

Abstract

This dissertation examines the impact of energy prices on firms’ financial and green performance. The analysis is conducted using firm-level data for more than 15 thousand firms of 14 different industries in Portugal between 2010 and 2017. The motivation behind this study is related with the growing importance of sustainability and the need of more environmental-friendly practices on business, furthermore, the absence of an empirical research exclusively for Portugal and the current energy crisis also inspire the realization of this work.The results show that increasing energy prices leads to a positive and significant effect on investment, however no significance for firms’ profitability and not a conclusive effect is foundfor overall employment. Moreover, the idea that higher energy prices induce companies towards more green practises does not hold, in fact for green investment and green employment no significance is found and for green revenues and green expenses, an increase in energy prices leads to a decrease in these variables.Additionally, an extension of the study to each industry and different energy dependence level is also performed to uncover some heterogeneity effects not shown in the aggregate results.The conclusions shed light on how and to what extent energy price affects firms and calls to policy makers to design a more comprehensive energy-policy that contributes to shifting firms to a greener state of business.

Date of Award	27 Apr 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Geraldo Cerqueiro (Supervisor)