Environmental Summits and Innovation

Daryna Grechyna and Pamela Efua Ofori

No 12120, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This study examines the impact of Conference of the Parties (COP) summits on innovation using an event study framework. Innovation is measured by patent grants, distinguishing between the total number of patents and the number of patents in environmental technologies, based on the World Intellectual Property Organization classification. We find that hosting a COP summit leads to a significant and lasting increase in the total number of patent grants, with an average rise of about 35 percent per year from the seventh to the thirteenth year after the summit, but has only a limited effect on the number of patent grants in environmental technologies. We further examine potential heterogeneity in the effects of COP summits by analyzing the impact of hosting a summit on patents in environmental technology compared to other technologies separately for each host country. The results suggest that while hosting a COP summit generally promotes environmental patenting, the effect is negative in some countries. We discuss possible reasons, including diminishing returns in green innovation and the influence of large industrial emitters. The findings are robust across alternative estimators, the inclusion of control variables, and different measures of patenting activity.

Keywords: COP summits; environmental technologies; patents; innovation; event study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O34 O44 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sbm and nep-tid
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