Are We Moving Towards a More Sustainable World? Insights from Patent Analysis of Chemical Inventions

Gianluca Biggi
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Gianluca Biggi: Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna

Chapter Chapter 3 in Industrial Dynamics and Firm Strategies in the Agrochemical Industry, 2024, pp 39-59 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Industrialized economies have historically maintained the hope that the advances in science, technology and innovation would have offered to humanity a wide range of options to improve its well-being and attain sustained economic growth. The transition towards a high technological frontier arising from the rapid advances of science, technology and innovation has opened a debate on the relations between innovation-induced industrial activities, related possible social and environmental threats and the role of policies to keep up with industry developments. To investigate those relations, I collect a unique dataset that includes patent applications in chemical technologies and analyse their disclosed groups of compounds by combining patent analysis with computational chemistry, and I develop a novel methodology to measure patent toxicity, that is, the extent to which a patent includes ‘components’ (i.e. chemical compounds) that are potentially toxic to humans and/or the environment. To illustrate the proposed methodology, I analyse the toxicity of 12 regulated chemical technologies as the persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in comparison with a control group of unregulated technologies. The measurement of patent toxicity opens up interesting avenues for future research and for policy.

Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:spbchp:978-3-031-52689-3_3

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-52689-3_3

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