China’s Coal Power Policies: Stock Market Reactions and Investor Expectations

This paper uses the event study method to analyze the market reaction to the coal power policy in different stages after the proposal of the dual carbon target and finds that the coal power policy has a significant impact on the stock market of China’s high carbon emission companies. Due to the different contents of policies in different stages, the stock market reaction is heterogeneous, indicating that the coal power policy would change the market expectations of investors. Furthermore, we use beta value to measure investor expectations and detect that carbon emission intensity and ESG score have a significant effect on the beta value, which reveals that China’s low-carbon transition practice has an impact on investor expectations in the stock market. These findings provide evidence and information for investors to avoid the risk of low-carbon transition and for policymakers to better understand investor expectations and design more reasonable policies.