This paper studies the voluntary provision of public goods that is partially driven by a desire to offset for individual polluting activities. We first extend existing theory and show that offsets allow a reduction in effective environmental pollution levels while not necessarily extending the...

Using panel data for German and Dutch firms from the services sector, this paper analyses the importance of ICT capital deepening and innovation for productivity. We employ a model that takes into account that innovation and ICT use may be complementary. The results show that the contribution of...

Based on a unique firm level data set of the German manufacturing sector, this paper provides new empirical evidence regarding the determinants of different types of environmental technological innovations. We examine particularly the effects of environmental organizational measures such as...

The European Commission has recently stepped up its promotion of the ?Integrated Product Policy?. The objective of the IPP is to support the realisation of environmental product innovations and thus to achieve a broad reduction of all environmental impacts throughout a product?s life cycle....

This paper investigates to what extent the usage of information and communication technology (ICT) fosters innovation activities by facilitating more flexible organisational structures in firms. We distinguish between functional flexibility (the ability of workers to co-operate and take...

The missing effect of investments of firms in information and communication technologies on productivity is studied by various recent papers (e.g. Oliner and Sichels 1994, Landauer 1995, Brynjolfsson and Hitt 1996). Several explanations are given for this missing link. Our paper deals with two...

In this paper, it is argued that ICT investment is closely linked with complementary innovations and most productive in firms with innovative experience. In an analysis based on firm?level panel data covering the period 1994?99, system GMM estimates for an extended production function framework...

This paper investigates the effects of the EU Environmental Management and Auditing Scheme (EMAS) on environmental innovations and competitiveness in German facilities. It comprises twelve in-depth case studies and telephone interviews with 1277 EMAS-validated facilities. The surveys show a...

We analyze the productivity effects of environmental (green) investment as well as of environmental expenditures and energy expenditures. For this purpose, we follow a production function approach where we account for these investment and expenditure categories as inputs. Based on a panel...

R&D expenditures of firms varies vastly between and within industries. In recent years a lot of theoretical and empirical studies attempted to explain the distribution of R&D expenditures. Four main factors repeatedly appeared in this literature: Firm size, market power, appropriability and...