Waiting or Acting: The Effects of Environmental Regulatory Uncertainty on Green Innovation

The author thanks the editor, Camelia Kuhnen, the anonymous associate editor, and two anonymous referees for their thoughtful and constructive comments, which have significantly improved the paper. This paper is based on the first chapter of the author’s dissertation at the University of Iowa. The author is deeply indebted to her committee chair, Anand Vijh, and committee members, Cameron Ellis, Erik Lie, and Petra Sinagl, for their constant support and invaluable guidance. The author is also thankful for the helpful comments and valuable suggestions by Jamie Brown, Jason (Pang-Li) Chen (discussant), Art Durnev, Jon Garfinkel, Steve Irlbeck, Cadence Jens (discussant), Feng (Jack) Jiang, Umang Khetan, Paul Koch, Wei Li, Tingting Liu, Stefano Manfredonia, Robert McDonald, Amrita Nain, Richard Peter, Yiming Qian, Varun Sharma (discussant), Suyong Song, Dragon Yongjun Tang, Chi-Yang Tsou, Hoa Briscoe-Tran, Jiajie Xu, and Tong Yao. This paper has also benefited from the participants at the Midwest Finance Association 2025 Annual Meeting, the Eastern Finance Association 2024 Annual Meeting, the Southern Finance Association 2023 Annual Meeting, the Financial Management Association 2023 Annual Meeting, the Corporate Social Responsibility conference at the University of Massachusetts at Boston 2023, the Silicon Prairie 2022 Conference, the Financial Management Association 2022 PhD Symposium, the Nova School of Business and Economics Finance PhD Final Countdown 2022, the Financial Markets and Corporate Governance 2022 PhD Symposium, the Asian Finance Association 2022 Conference, and the seminars at California State University at Fresno, Hofstra University, Miami University, Iowa State University, Tennessee Tech University, Trinity University, the University of Iowa, the University of North Dakota, and the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley. All remaining errors are the author’s own.