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Open research questions in Sustainable Finance and Green Bonds

230 gap statements mined from Sustainable Finance and Green Bonds papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 1,989 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.

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What the literature leaves open

  • The paper highlights the need for a regulatory framework to operate in the context of climate-related financial risks.

    A Dynamic Framework for Climate Conditional Value-At-Risk Based on Nonlinear Canonical Correlation Forests · 2026 · DOI

  • The accounting problem is the traceability gap between labelled issuance, allocated expenditure, and realised material outcomes. Incomplete allocation traceability, issuer composition, and implementation delays are possible mechanisms requiring disaggregated evidence. The study identifies the need for comparable allocation reporting and verifiable circular outcomes.

    Green Bond Market Development and Circularity in the EU-27: Material Use and Resource Productivity · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies challenges in estimating the impact of green finance reforms on green innovation responses, including the need to address concerns about parallel trends and treatment effects. It highlights the difficulty of generalizing the results to all resource-based cities, given the limited number of treated cities in the initial cohort.

    Resource Dependence and Uneven Green Innovation Responses to Green Finance: Evidence from China’s Initial Pilot Cohort · 2026 · DOI

  • The study notes the challenge of disclosing ESG performance according to the needs of investors.

    The Effect of ESG Performance on Bank Liquidity Risk · 2024 · DOI

  • Disaggregated evidence is required to understand the mechanisms of incomplete allocation traceability, issuer composition, and implementation delays. Further research is needed to resolve issuer aggregation, unobserved allocation quality, or causal identification. The study suggests the need for comparable allocation reporting and verifiable circular outcomes.

    Green Bond Market Development and Circularity in the EU-27: Material Use and Resource Productivity · 2026 · DOI

  • While traditional safe‐haven assets such as gold and sovereign bonds hedge monetary and financial crises, their effectiveness against transition‐related risks, particularly in emerging economies, remains unclear.

    “Flight to Safety” Vis‐à‐Vis “Flight to Quality”: The Safe‐Haven Appeal of Green Indices in Developing Economies · 2026 · DOI

  • The promotion of the synergistic development of environmental regulation and sustainable finance is insufficient in empirical analysis, and fails to reach the desired high level as in game analysis.

    The impact mechanism of environmental regulation and sustainable finance on green development of China’s A-share listed port enterprises · 2026 · DOI

  • The role of finance has been under-researched in the literature on sustainability transitions.

    ‘Kicking the shin and extending a hand’: Which strategies do civil society actors use to affect transitions to sustainable finance? · 2026 · DOI

  • This study aims to address an explicit gap in the literature on climate finance in conflict contexts.

    Gender and climate financing in non-self-governing territories: the case of Western Sahara · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper addresses an original and underexplored topic by examining climate finance, gender, refugee status and non-self-governing territory status through the case of Western Sahara.

    Gender and climate financing in non-self-governing territories: the case of Western Sahara · 2026 · DOI

  • The findings show that while MDBs have established comprehensive policy frameworks, several important risk areas are insufficiently addressed.

    Evaluating Multilateral Development Banks’ Environmental and Social Policies for Green Hydrogen Projects: A Content Analysis · 2026 · DOI

  • The application of green bonds in a multi-country context has not been studied extensively.

    A bibliometric analysis of green bonds use in multi-country contexts: current status and future directions · 2026 · DOI

  • Financial constraints significantly constrain renewable energy development in emerging economies, yet the mechanisms by which green finance (GF) influences innovation capacity remain insufficiently quantified.

    Green Finance and Renewable Energy Innovation: Addressing Financial Constraints for SDG Achievement in China · 2026 · DOI

  • There is still a lack of evidence concerning the influencing factors of green finance while considering food production, water productivity, and agricultural production as a result of the increasing global population.

    Land Resources and Climate Resilience: The Role of Environmental Policy and Food Production in the Settings of the G7 Economies · 2026 · DOI

  • A significant gap in the literature is the failure to distinguish that not all renewable energy sources are environmentally beneficial.

    Green finance and renewable energy mix: Evidence from emerging countries · 2025 · DOI

  • While our literature review reveals significant industry responses, it also highlights that the voluntary nature of many initiatives and the lack of standardized regulatory frameworks pose considerable challenges to transforming business models in line with sustainability goals.

    Finance in Sustainable Transition: A Comparative Review Across Institutional Investors, Asset Managers, Venture Capital, Insurance, and Bonds · 2025 · DOI

  • Despite a good number of studies on the impact of such efforts on bank lending decisions and by extension to non-financial borrowers, little is known about their effect on banking institutions themselves.

    Financed emissions and the cost of bank equity · 2025 · DOI

  • This transformation remains limited in many emerging economies due to persistent challenges, including data fragmentation, weak standardisation, limited reproducibility, and insufficient technical expertise to execute and maintain. The study further contributes to the literature by demonstrating that the integration of AI into ESG analytics aligns both institutional and dynamic capabilities perspectives.

    Artificial Intelligence-Powered Green Finance and Environmental, Social and Governance Tracking in Emerging Markets: A Systematic Review · 2026 · DOI

  • The application of green finance in East Africa remains fragmented and insufficiently aligned with environmental system dynamics. Most green finance studies have not considered hydrology, water stress, or land-use change. There is a need for integrating financial instruments, environmental processes, and spatial analytical tools.

    Geospatial and Environmental Science Perspectives on Green Finance in East Africa: Integrating Climate, Hydrological, and Policy Analysis · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of a unified objective yardstick for ESG rating systems is a significant challenge. The endogenous bias in econometric models is difficult to completely eradicate. Greenwashing is a significant challenge for ESG portfolios.

    ESG Integration and Long-Term Portfolio Performance: Evidence from International Markets · 2026 · DOI

  • Existing studies offer mixed findings on the Paris Agreement's (PA) impact on firm performance and cost of capital.

    The Paris agreement on the cost of equity capital in China · 2026 · DOI

  • Nevertheless, the nature and intensity of funding solutions aiming at supporting green investments from bulk shipping companies are still scarcely investigated by academics.

    Green finance in bulk shipping · 2024 · DOI

  • The initial cohort includes only three resource-based treated cities and partly mapped new areas, - The estimates concern eight treated cities and cannot be generalized to all resource-based cities, - Transferability to other resource-dependent regions remains uncertain, - The study does not establish a mechanism for the difference in responses, - The results do not show whether the reform increased financing…

    Resource Dependence and Uneven Green Innovation Responses to Green Finance: Evidence from China’s Initial Pilot Cohort · 2026 · DOI

  • The study only considers Chinese listed banks, - The study excludes banks lacking ESG-related data, - The study conducts tail-trimming at the 1% level on all sample…

    The Effect of ESG Performance on Bank Liquidity Risk · 2024 · DOI

  • To formulate the development strategy and integrate ESG into the long-term strategy of enterprise development.

    The Impact of ESG Rating on Enterprise Financing Cost -- Taking Longji Green Energy as an Example · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Sustainable Finance and Green Bonds

Most recent work

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Open questions raised by papers listed on this page include: (1) Further research is needed to resolve issuer aggregation, unobserved allocation quality, or causal identification (“Green Bond Market Development and Circularity in the EU-27: Material Use and…”, 2026); (2) While traditional safe‐haven assets such as gold and sovereign bonds hedge monetary and financial crises, their effectiveness against transition‐related risks, particularly in emerging economies, remains unclear (““Flight to Safety” Vis‐à‐Vis “Flight to Quality”: The Safe‐Haven Appeal of…”, 2026); (3) The application of green bonds in a multi-country context has not been studied extensively (“A bibliometric analysis of green bonds use in multi-country contexts: current…”, 2026); (4) There is still a lack of evidence concerning the influencing factors of green finance while considering food production, water productivity, and agricultural production as a result of the increasing global population (“Land Resources and Climate Resilience: The Role of Environmental Policy and…”, 2026); (5) This transformation remains limited in many emerging economies due to persistent challenges, including data fragmentation, weak standardisation, limited reproducibility, and insufficient technical expertise to execute and maintain (“Artificial Intelligence-Powered Green Finance and Environmental, Social and…”, 2026). 230 gap statements have been mined from Sustainable Finance and Green Bonds papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 1,989 papers on the topic; the gaps come from whichever of those papers state one. They are mostly the research gaps the authors state and the papers' abstracts, plus future-work, limitations and challenges passages. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one, so you can read the original claim in context.

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