Does EMAS foster innovation in European firms? An empirical investigation

This paper aims at analyzing whether environmental management systems can spur innovation at firm level, by providing new empirical evidence on the relationship between EMAS (Eco Management and Audit Scheme) and patented innovation. In applying a Negative Binomial model with Fixed Effect, we estimate the number of granted patents using EMAS as key explanatory variable. The relationship between EMAS and innovation is studied by using an original panel database composed by 30439 European firms belonging to all sectors and size. Moreover, we use an original instrumental variable to control for potential endogeneity. The analysis reveals that EMAS is positively correlated with innovation at firm level, although the results vary across countries and sectors.