Leveraging Free Trade Zones for Corporate Green Transition: An Impact Assessment of China’s Institutional Innovations

Using Chinese A-share listed firms from 2007–2021, this study examines the impact of Free Trade Zones on corporate green transition. A staggered difference-in-differences analysis shows that FTZs significantly promote green transition, particularly among less-polluting industries, state-owned firms, and firms in environmental protection regions. The results highlight the roles of environmental disclosure, financing constraints, and reverse knowledge transfer. Due to data licensing restrictions, the replication package provides a synthetic dataset in which firm identifiers and panel structure are retained, while all numerical variables are replaced with randomly generated values. Detailed explanations are provided in the README file. Researchers with authorized access to the original data can re-merge the original sources using firm identifiers and years to replicate all empirical results.