IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucn/wpaper/202523.html

Innovation and Emissions in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Ronald B. Davies

Abstract

Innovation is widely believed to play an important role in addressing climate change. Nevertheless, estimating such effects is difficult due to the endogeneity of innovation measures. I use a novel shift-share instrument building from cross-border patent citations to deal with this endogeneity. Using data for 27 European countries across 20 manufacturing industries from 1995-2019, I find evidence of significant endogeneity bias that overstates the causal effect of patents on emissions. Further, if anything, it seems that new non-green patents may increase emissions. This then suggests that relying on new technologies alone to solve the climate crisis is potentially ineffective.

Suggested Citation

  • Ronald B. Davies, 2025. "Innovation and Emissions in Europe," Working Papers 202523, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:202523
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10197/31892
    File Function: First version, 2025
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Q55 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Technological Innovation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:202523. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: UCD School of Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.