Regional Differences in the Generation of Green Technologies: The Role of Local Recombinant Capabilities and Academic Inventors

This paper investigates the association between region-level recombinant capabilities and the generation of green technologies (GTs), together with their interplay with the intensity of academic involvement in innovation dynamics. The analysis focuses on Italian NUTS 3 regions, over the period 1998-2009. We show that the local capacity to introduce novel combinations is positively and strongly associated to the generation of GTs, while the involvement of academic inventors in local innovation dynamics shows an interesting compensatory role when local contexts lack such capacity.