Green bonds for sustainability: current pathways and new avenues

Purpose The study aims to consolidate knowledge, explore current dynamics, understand knowledge progression, identify primary research streams, present content analysis and provide future research directions for green bonds research. Design/methodology/approach The authors reviewed 150 high-quality Scopus-indexed articles on green bonds in two stages. First, they use bibliometric analysis to understand the field's most relevant articles, authors, institutions and journals. Second, they analysed 49 curated articles to identify and analyse primary research streams and offer research directions. Findings The authors report the most influential articles, authors, journals and clusters based on article co-citation networks. They identify five green bond research streams: issuance, greenium and its drivers, connectedness, drivers and barriers, and sustainable development. Research limitations/implications Using different databases, tools, sample periods or article screening criteria may yield different results. The study's findings are robust to document selection or analytical tools. Practical implications The study helps researchers, practitioners, regulators, policymakers, issuers and investors understand green bond issuance, pricing and connectedness research. Originality/value This unique study sheds light on publication trends, the most influential articles, authors, journals and the conceptual and intellectual structure of the field. It identifies and elaborates primary research streams, succinctly summarizes the most influential articles and offers future research directions.