Interrelation between Eco-Innovation and Intra-Industry Trade—A Proposal for a Proxy Indicator of Sustainability in the EU Countries

Teodoro Gallucci, Vesselina Dimitrova and Georgi Marinov
Additional contact information
Teodoro Gallucci: Department of Economics, Management and Law, University of Bari, 70124 Bari, Italy
Vesselina Dimitrova: Faculty of Management, University of Economics-Varna, Varna 9002, Bulgaria
Georgi Marinov: Faculty of Management, University of Economics-Varna, Varna 9002, Bulgaria

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 23, 1-13

Abstract: The “innovation–trade” interrelation has been a subject of research for decades. Nowadays, in the context of the growing importance of sustainable development, the role of eco-innovation is essential for promoting a rapid economic growth in each country. In this sense, eco-innovation influences the level of intra-industry trade stimulating international trade to adopt environmentally-friendly technologies. In general, the evaluation of eco-innovation in EU countries is done through indicators of their degree of performance and their impact on the welfare of nations. Using Eurostat data and WITS (World Integrated Trade Solution) database for the period 2010–2018, the authors of this paper give empirical evidence of a linkage between the two indicators. The Grubel–Lloyd index is selected as an appropriate tool to show that socio-economic performance has a significant weight in eco-innovation scoreboard measurement. The results confirm that intra-industry trade of each EU country is closely related to the level of its eco-innovation index. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to test for such a type of interrelation and to show that by verifying the usefulness of eco-innovation performance in EU countries through an intra-industry trade indicator (IIT) such as the Grubel–Lloyd index.

Keywords: eco-innovation; Grubel–Lloyd index; intra-industry trade; European Union countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/23/6641/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/23/6641/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:23:p:6641-:d:290427

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().