Cold Start for the Green Innovation Machine

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Cold Start for the Green Innovation Machine

Publishing date: 23 November 2009
Authors: Philippe Aghion Reinhilde Veugelers

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This Policy Contribution accompanies the Policy Brief, No Green Growth Without Innovation. Written by Senior Non-Resident Fellow Philippe Aghion, Senior Resident Fellow Reinhilde Veugelers and Researcher Clément Serre, this paper discusses the state of green innovation and goes into more depth in discussing the current problems in the area. Examining research and development, patent, and venture capital data, the authors point out that there is momentum for private investment in green technologies. However, they argue that, thus far, the implicit tax rate on energy in the EU27 is too low and fragmented, the carbon price in the EU Emissions Trading System is too volatile, and the public R&D expenditures dedicated to energy and environment are too low. They conclude that immediate state intervention is necessary, at least at the onset, to ensure that the green innovation machine gets properly started.

About the authors

Philippe Aghion

Philippe Aghion, a Non-resident Senior Fellow since September 2006 to 2016, was coordinating Bruegel's research project on higher education.

He is the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he started teaching Economics in 2000. Previously, he held positions at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Nuffield College (Oxford), and University College London.

Philippe's research spans a broad array of fields including corporate finance, industrial organisation, political economy and macroeconomics. He is managing editor of the journal The Economics of Transition, which he launched in 1992.
Reinhilde Veugelers

Prof Dr. Reinhilde Veugelers is a full professor at KULeuven (BE) at the Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation. She has been a Senior fellow at Bruegel since 2009. She is also a CEPR Research Fellow, a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and of the Academia Europeana. From 2004-2008, she was on academic leave, as advisor at the European Commission (BEPA Bureau of European Policy Analysis). She served on the ERC Scientific Council from 2012-2018 and on the RISE Expert Group advising the commissioner for Research. She is a member of VARIO, the expert group advising the Flemish minister for Innovation. She is currently a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of the journal Science and a co-PI on the Science of Science Funding Initiative at NBER.

With her research concentrated in the fields of industrial organisation, international economics and strategy, innovation and science, she has authored numerous well cited publications in leading international journals. Specific recent topics include novelty in technology development, international technology transfers through MNEs, global innovation value chains, young innovative companies, innovation for climate change, industry science links and their impact on firm’s innovative productivity, evaluation of research & innovation policy, explaining scientific productivity, researchers’ international mobility, novel scientific research.

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