Interpellating Finance

Is the greenium an ideological phenomenon?

The study Interpellating Finance – A Dramaturgical Model for Green Bond Pricing explores the mechanisms of green bond pricing and the role of green labels in the financial market.

Alessandro Maresca, Giulia Dal Maso, and Aneil Tripathy draw on the work of Althusser, Laclau, and Butler to describe the historical emergence of the green financial apparatus and the related proliferation of green labels and signifiers.

They use a dramaturgical model to analyse the mechanisms of green bond pricing and the actors involved in a green bond boot camp to show that:

• The study uses the example of the German government's issuance of a green bond paired with its vanilla counterpart to illustrate the process of green bond pricing.
• The added value of green financial instruments, or greenium, cannot be fully explained by climate risks, pointing to an "Ideological State Apparatus" instead.
• The greenium is a material effect of the complex underlying valuation practices that rely on a subjectivation apparatus attuned to existing relations of production.
• Green labels serve as the malleable ground on which meanings and positions are articulated and temporarily fixed, and market participants are constituted as green ideological subjects.

The authors suggest that complex processes of subjectification influence the valuation of green bonds and could inform the development of more nuanced models for green bond pricing.

This study challenges the conventional understanding of the greenium and should drive policymakers and practitioners to consider the role of green labels in shaping investor behaviour and market dynamics.