Small Grant Scheme on Pandemics, Cities, Regions & Industry: Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Green Patents in the Eurozone
The project presented here looks at several highly relevant issues that are interrelated and require a joint approach: innovation, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Firstly, innovative investment is considered a particularly relevant topic, since from the perspective of private companies, it can increase revenue, reduce costs, or increase their production capacity. On the side of public management, it can also bring solutions to complex problems and increase the quality of life for civil society. Secondly, the advent of problems related to climate factors and pollution can imply adverse results for businesses in various dimensions. In fact, consumers’ perception of companies’ actions towards the environment is increasingly relevant in the market. In this scenario, “green innovations” are those that observe the premises of sustainable growth. Thirdly, with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the allocation of public resources for innovation has changed, and the management of resources itself has been rethought by managers. However, this period has allowed the generation of opportunities for some companies, especially in the health sector and some niches of the service segment, generating new business alternatives.
In view of the above, the main objective of this investigation is to evaluate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected patents aimed at mitigating climate change. Hence, the main interest of this project is to identify the trajectory of the volume of green patent applications and publications before and after the pandemic. Through the construction of maps, indicators, and statistical measures, comparative analyses will be built to aid in the identification of this scenario involving the member countries of the European Union and regions within the same country.
The results of this research will be useful for various audiences. Private company managers will map regions that still lack innovations for climate change and investigate their potential in a market niche, based on regional specificities. Policymakers will be able to revise current public policies and plan new actions in the field of sustainable innovation. Civil society’s gain will consist of observing whether public resources sponsored for sustainable innovations are being properly applied and distributed in their corresponding regions, as well as whether the scenario is more favorable for sustainable technologies over time.
You can read their recent Regions article by clicking the link: Green patents: instruments against climate change and related social inequalities
“We greatly appreciate the support we received from the RSA Small Grant Scheme on Pandemics, Cities, Regions, and Industry. The grant allows the initiation of a research agenda on European green patents from a regional perspective. Specifically, the authors hope to contribute to the debate on patents for climate change and generate useful information for decision-making by public and private managers. The researchers thank the Regional Studies Association for their vote of confidence in selecting this proposal. We hope to contribute to the growth of the debate promoted by this community.”
Principal Investigator: Coro Chasco
Coro Chasco (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, UAM) earned her PhD and graduated with honours in Applied Economic Modelling at UAM in 2002. Ambassador to Spain and Fellow (FeRSA) of the Regional Studies Association (RSA), she is currently accredited Full Professor and co-editor of the journal of Spatial Economic Analysis. She runs the Spatial and Regional Economics research group (ECONRES) and has received different prizes and distinctions. She has published in top-ranked journals like “Economic Geography”, “Papers in Regional Science”, “Regional Science and Urban Economics”, “Spatial Economic Analysis”, “Annals of Regional Science”, and “Mathematics”. She published 46 papers in WoS and Scopus databases, 3 books, 17 book chapters, and many other disseminating scientific publications. Dr Chasco works on spatial econometrics and spatial analysis methods, with applications to regional growth, housing prices, environment valuation, tourism, and quality of life. Her intense academic activity has led Professor Chasco to analyze in depth the regional and local reality of Spain, Europe, and Latin America through a wide range of methods and models of spatial geographic analysis.
Team Member: Fernando H. Taques
Fernando Taques has completed bachelor’s degrees in Economics, Business Administration, and Production Engineering, as well as an incomplete bachelor’s degree in Statistics. He obtained a master’s degree in Economics, and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the Mackenzie Presbyterian University (Brazil), with a cotutelle period at the University of Minho (Portugal), and a research internship at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain).
Currently, he is doing post-doctoral research at the Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil) and the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain), the latter linked to the research group ECONRES (Spatial and Regional Economics). He has teaching experience in courses on Economics, Accounting, and International Relations, all of which were held in Brazil.
His research experience is reflected in his multidisciplinary background. He has published 23 articles in academic journals, two book chapters, and 47 papers presented at conferences, resulting in an H-index (Google Scholar) of 5 for his works’ citations. His research publications include regional studies, organizational innovation, innovation economics, and welfare economics. Currently, he is interested in geography of innovation, particularly patent innovation with spatial geographic analysis techniques using intra and inter-country approaches for different types of innovation, sectors, and regions.