Abstract
This paper aims to shed light on the role of technological opportunities for green innovation by studying the case of Green ICT innovation. We test two hypotheses: (1) Firms active in low-opportunity technological areas are less innovative; (2) Firms active in low-opportunity technological areas are more likely to change their direction of technical change. To do so, we construct a firm-level panel data set for the years 1992-2009 combining patent data from the European Patent Office with firm-level data from the German Innovation Panel (Mannheim Innovation Panel). The results are based on dynamic count data estimation models applying General Methods of Moments estimators. Our results support our hypotheses: firms active in low-opportunity technological areas are less innovative but are more likely to switch from pure ICT innovation to Green ICT innovation.
Highlights
Innovation in environment-friendly, ‘green’, technologies is crucial to ensure sustainable growth
In specification (1) it is the number of all information and communication technologies (ICT) patents, in specification (2) it is the number of Green ICT patents and in specification (3) it is the number of pure ICT patents, i.e. the number of non-green ICT patents
The present article aims to fill a gap in the literature on green innovation by assessing the role of technological opportunities for the development of green ICT innovation
Summary
Innovation in environment-friendly, ‘green’, technologies is crucial to ensure sustainable growth. Some evidence with respect to the role of path dependencies for green innovation exists (Acemoglu et al 2012; Rexhäuser and Löschel 2015; Aghion et al 2016), but there is nearly no empirical work which examines the role of technological opportunities for green innovation We provide such evidence to help closing this gap in the literature. We test the hypothesis that firms which are active in low-opportunity technologies are more likely than firms active in high-opportunity technologies to change their direction of technical change We study those two hypotheses in the context of innovation in green and non-green information and communication technologies (ICT). ICT are an interesting field of investigation since they are characterized by rapid, disruptive technical change and short technology life cycles resulting at
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