What is the optimal system of intellectual property rights to encourage innovation? Empirical evidence from economic history can help to inform important policy questions that have been difficult to answer with modern data: 1) Does the existence of strong patent laws encourage innovation? And 2)...

Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) have become ubiquitous in the current debate and have emerged as the key issue of global innovation policy. The ‘Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights’ (TRIPS) Agreement, signed in 1994 as a founding element of the World Trade Organisation,...

Clean technology can help states mitigate climate change, and intellectual property rights (IPR) influence the development and adoption of clean technology. While previous research recognizes the importance of IPR rules, it does not investigate how IPR rules influence the political incentives of...

This paper investigates the role of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection and Environmental Policies (EPs) on clean (renewable) and dirty (fossil-based) technology diffusion from top-innovators. IPR protection and EPs are extensively debated policy tools, as IPR protection addresses...

The purpose of this paper is to explore the differentiated impact of demand-pull and technology-push policies in shaping technological patterns in the biofuels sector. The empirical analysis is based on a novel and original database (BioPat) containing patents in the field of biofuels selected...

This paper investigates the impact of alternative environmental policy instruments on technological innovations aiming to improve energy efficiency in buildings. The empirical analysis focuses on three main types of policy instruments, namely regulatory energy standards in buildings codes,...

The deployment of eco-innovations in developing countries is a key driver of their contribution to efficiently addressing global environmental challenges. It is also a key driver of markets for eco-innovation and sustainable economic development. This report explores the barriers developing...

This paper describes the methodology, characteristics and potential use of BioPat, a dataset containing patents in the field of biofuels. The innovative methodology we use aims to solve drawbacks related to how patent data are allocated and organized in international databases. In order to...

This paper investigates the impact of alternative environmental policy instruments on technological innovations aiming to improve the energy efficiency in buildings. The empirical analysis focuses on three main types of policy instruments, namely regulatory energy standards in buildings codes,...

The achievements in agricultural innovation over the past century have been impressive, supporting large increases in agricultural yields and low food prices. Critical to this success has been sustained public sector investment combined with a decentralized and competitive research system in the...