On the economic returns of Eco-Innovation: where do we stand?

Abstract

The aim of the Chapter is to provide an overview on where we stand in terms of research and main findings on eco-innovations and their economic effects. Many theoretical and empirical contributions have tried to answer the question “Does it pay to be green?”, and a variety of heterogeneous answers have been given to date. For instance it is found to depend on who gets rewards, on where it can pay, on how it pays and on the typologies of innovations under scrutiny. The Chapter summarizes the available contributions assessing the economic performance effects of improvements in the environmental performances at various levels of analysis. Economic performance is either conceived through short-term measures, such as profitability, or longer term competitiveness measures, such as productivity. Later, it provides new empirical evidence on economic effects of eco-innovations using panel data from the Community Innovation Surveys on selected European countries and sectors.