The determinants of eco-innovations at the country level. An analysis for OECD countries

Resumen

The main object of this paper is to study the determinants of eco-innovations worldwide. The rising world’s temperature and the increase of naturaldisasters occurred in most recent years have increased the concerns about the sustainability of the economic activity. In this regard, ecologicalinnovation has been gaining a special relevance in the past years. Despite this, countries are heterogeneous in terms of green patent activity. Thisprovides us with an opportunity to understand its determinants and to offer a guidance on how to act for both, firms and governments. The studymoves into this direction and tries to understand the institutional factors that would explain differences between countries regarding the number ofeco-innovations. We test our hypotheses on data collected from PATSTAT. In particular, the study focuses on the green patent activity in countriesbelonging to the OECD for the period 2007-2015. The emphasis is placed on institutional factors and the results show that intellectual propertyrights, the effectiveness of the judicial system and protectionism are determining factors of eco-innovations.