Marcin Kacperczyk, Imperial College London

As part of the ser­ies of the "Fin­ance Re­search Sem­inar", VGSF wel­comes Mar­cin Kac­per­czyk from Im­per­ial Col­lege Lon­don to present his re­search pa­per.
Per­sonal Webpage

Pa­per

The CO2 Ques­tion: Tech­nical Pro­gress and the Cli­mate Crisis

Are com­pan­ies grav­it­at­ing to­wards green R&D and is cor­por­ate be­ha­vior, in par­tic­u­lar car­bon emis­sions, af­fected by green tech­nical pro­gress? Based on global pat­ent fil­ings and cor­por­ate fin­an­cial re­port­ing, we ana­lyze cor­por­ate green and brown R&D activ­ity and its ef­fects in re­du­cing car­bon emis­sions. We find con­sist­ent evid­ence of lim­ited green R&D by brown com­pan­ies. In­nov­at­ing com­pan­ies with higher car­bon emis­sions en­gage more in brown R&D and less in green R&D. Des­pite a steady rise in the share of green R&D, we find little evid­ence that green in­nov­a­tion re­duces the fu­ture car­bon emis­sions of 1) in­nov­at­ing firms, 2) non-in­nov­at­ing firms in the same sector, 3) firms in other sect­ors and, 4) across coun­tries. Dir­ect and in­dir­ect emis­sions are not sig­ni­fic­antly af­fected by green in­nov­a­tion across all sect­ors and around the world, whether in the short term (one year after fil­ing a green pat­ent) or in the me­dium term (three or five years after fil­ing).