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Lorenzo Napolitano, Angelica Sbardella, Davide Consoli, Nicolò Barbieri, François Perruchas

The objective of this paper is to analyse the relationship between income inequality and environmental innovation. We use the Economic Fitness and Complexity algorithm to compute an index of green inventive capacity in a panel of 57 countries over the period 1970–2010. The empirical analysis reveals that, on average, inequality is detrimental to countries’ capacity to engage complex green technologies knowledge bases. Using non-parametric methods allows us to further articulate this general finding and to uncover interesting non-linearities in the relationship between innovation and inequality.

Additional data

Year of publication 2022
Journal Structural Change and Economic Dynamics
DOI 10.1016/j.strueco.2022.09.007
Reference Lorenzo Napolitano, Angelica Sbardella, Davide Consoli, Nicolò Barbieri, François Perruchas (), . Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, , p. 1