Fabrizio Fusillo

Achieving net-zero emissions alongside sustained economic growth necessitates unprecedented innovation efforts. Demand is a pivotal driver. This paper presents novel evidence concerning the relationship between public procurement for green products and services (GPP) and firm innovation. GPP widens market niches for new green goods and accelerates the adaptation of conventional goods to meet more rigorous environmental standards. This, in turn, fosters the creative response of the firm, stimulating innovation in both new green products and new green processes. The empirical analysis focuses on US publicly listed innovative companies from 2004 to 2016. The results demonstrate that increases in GPP stimulate green innovation overall, particularly process-related. Moreover, we observe that this is more pronounced in larger and older firms, as well as in those endowed with substantial knowledge and organizational capital. These results provide valuable insights for designing effective policy frameworks to expedite the green transition while ensuring economic growth.

The simultaneous pursuit of circular economy and bioeconomy objectives is crucial for a successful transition towards a more sustainable economic system, as also recognised by European institutions. However, mapping and analysing European research and innovation capacity in circular bioeconomy (CBE) is a challenging task, also due to data shortage. The analysis presented in this chapter aims to map the CBE research and innovation networks in Europe and identify their strengths and weaknesses. We apply network analysis techniques to a sample of collaborative research projects carried out in European regions in the period 2015-2019 and to patent data. The role and position of regions in the networks are assessed using a “node-removal strategy”, while a taxonomy of regional capabilities is developed based on comparisons of regional centrality in research and patent-technology networks. We find evidence of high connectivity in these domains, in the sense of intense collaboration across EU regions. Nonetheless, the analysis also shows that there is a significant heterogeneity in the distribution, capacity, and intensity of the connections, as well as a high concentration around few and very central regions. These findings can be precious for policymakers and other stakeholders who care about reducing the EU research and innovation disparities.

Although evolutionary economics has extensively analyzed the evolution of industries in relation to innovation and technology lifecycles, the interplay between industry lifecycles and evolutionary patterns of knowledge networks has not been fully explored yet. This work aims to bridge this gap by analyzing the co-evolutionary patterns of knowledge and trade flows in the mining industry, using social network tools in combination with the Schumpeterian tradition of analysis. The study focuses on three Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, and Peru, where the mining sector plays a significant role in the economy, particularly in the context of energy and digital transitions. Our findings suggest that the innovation network and the global value chain-trade network display divergent co-evolutionary patterns; while the former tends to be stable and concentrated, the latter shows increasing fragmentation and turbulence. The analysis also shows remarkable evolutionary evidence at the country level.

Recent economics of knowledge studies have highlighted the strong positive effects that the limited exhaustibility of knowledge and its cumulability exert on the recombinant generation of new technological knowledge. While existing empirical investigations primarily focus on the knowledge generation and technology production functions, the analysis of the cost of knowledge has received less attention. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the dynamics and determinants of patent costs in the European Union in the period 1992–2012. The analysis of patent unit costs in European countries, measured as the amount of research and development (R&D) expenditure per patent application to the European Patent Office (EPO), shows a steady decline and clear convergence toward lower levels, both in time and across countries. We find that a larger stock of patents and a higher technological variety and coherence of its composition are associated with a sharper reduction in patent costs. Our findings suggest that, in Europe, ideas have been getting cheaper.

This article investigates the role of technological, industrial, and human capital composition in shaping short-term regional resilience in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008. Using data on 295 US Metropolitan Statistical Areas over the period 2008–14, we find that the most resilient regions feature a very diversified industrial structure. At the same time, an excess of technological diversity thwarts the ability to absorb external shocks. Lastly, a high endowment of high-level abstract skills is positively correlated with regional resilience, though the moderating effect of technological diversity is negative.

Through an original combination of the World Input-Output Dataset and OECD data on Analytical Business Enterprise R&D, we build up a longitudinal network of 690 nodes (23 industries in 30 countries) from 2009 to 2013. Drawing on complex network analysis techniques, we examine the relational properties of the industry-country nodes, identify the most central ones, and detect the clusters that they form. While the diffusion of embodied R&D is highly pervasive, the linkages across industries are asymmetric and polarised. The position and role of the industry-country nodes in the network show a high variability both over time and across its network dimensions. Furthermore, except for transportation and ICT related industries, embodied R&D flows are largely confined within national borders.