As an important green financial instrument, green bonds have an significant impact on the green and sustainable development. The impact of green bonds on corporate financial performance is significant for the green transformation for enterprises. However, the impact of green bonds on corporate financial performance, especially their differences on the short-term and long-term corporate financial performance need to be further studied. Consequently, the mechanism of issuing green bonds on the short-term and long-term financial performance of enterprises is deeply analyzed, including the direct effect and indirect effect. Issuing green bonds not only directly affect the corporate financial performance by capital supply effect, green reputation effect, resource driving effect on directly, but also indirectly affect it through mediating variables—R&D investment, environmental information disclosure and agency cost. With the sample of annual data of 860 non-financial listed companies from 2012 to 2020, the empirical results of the difference-in-differences (DID) model show that the issuance of green bonds significantly reduces the short-term financial performance of enterprises, while significantly improves the long-term financial performance of enterprises. The further empirical analysis based on mediating models find that the issuance of green bonds mainly reduces the short-term financial performance of enterprises by increasing agency cost, while improves the long-term financial performance by improving R&D investment and environmental information disclosure. Finally, this paper puts forward practical policy suggestions on how to use green bonds to promote corporate financial performance.

green bonds,short-term financial performance,long-term financial performance,difference-in-differences,mediating effect