Knowledge spillovers from clean and dirty technologies

Dechezlepretre, Antoine, Martin, Ralf and Mohnen, Myra (2014) Knowledge spillovers from clean and dirty technologies. CEP Discussion Papers (CEPDP1300). London School of Economics and Political Science. Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK.

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Abstract

How much should governments subsidize the development of new clean technologies? We use patent citation data to investigate the relative intensity of knowledge spillovers in clean and dirty technologies in two technological fields: energy production and transportation. We introduce a new methodology that takes into account the whole history of patent citations to capture the indirect knowledge spillovers generated by patents. We find that conditional on a wide range of potential confounding factors clean patents receive on average 43% more citations than dirty patents. Knowledge spillovers from clean technologies are comparable in scale to those observed in the IT sector. The radical novelty of clean technologies relative to more incremental dirty inventions seems to account for their superiority. Our results can support public support for clean R&D. They also suggest that green policies might be able to boost economic growth through induced knowledge spillovers.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	http://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/series.asp?...
Additional Information:	© 2014 The Authors
Divisions:	Centre for Economic Performance
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
JEL classification:	H - Public Economics > H2 - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue > H23 - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies O - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth > O3 - Technological Change; Research and Development > O30 - General O - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth > O5 - Economywide Country Studies > O54 - Latin America; Caribbean O - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth > O5 - Economywide Country Studies > O55 - Africa Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q58 - Government Policy
Date Deposited:	12 Dec 2014 12:20
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 19:15
Funders:	Economic and Social Research Council
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/60501

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