FinTech finance and social-environmental performance around the world

Abstract

We examine the influence of the country-level value of FinTech finance on social-environmental performance across 58 countries during the period of 2013–2019. Our analysis incorporates additional economic, institutional, and social factors to capture the multifaceted nature of the effect. Our findings reveal a small yet statistically significant positive impact of FinTech finance on social-environmental performance. This effect remains robust across various measures and estimation methods, as well as through sensitivity and endogeneity analyses. While we do not observe nonlinear effects, we do identify lagged effects. Our study contributes to the limited existing literature by utilizing a large sample of countries and employing aggregate values of FinTech finance to predict long-term social-environmental performance. As a result, our findings hold implications for policy considerations.

Keywords: Institutional, Social-Environmental, Endogeneity Analyses, Fintech