Exploring the Potential of Geographical Indications for Green Innovation in EU regions

The Geographical Indications’ (GIs) policy tool of the European Union (EU) has achieved increasing success since its introduction in 1992. Moreover, the EU has implemented, through the Green Deal, an ambitious plan to become climate-neutral by 2050. In this scenario, the adoption of green technologies could be useful to reduce carbon emissions, mitigate and adapt the effects of climate change. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate if GIs play a role in the implementation of green innovation at regional level. By using fixed effects regression model, we test this relationship for 245 NUTS2 EU-27 regions over the period of 1996-2017. Preliminary results seem to be consistent with the neo-Schumpeterian distance-to-the-frontier model, suggesting that market competition is linked to sustainable innovative activities, and that GIs have a positive effect on green innovation in agriculture, with regions furthest away from the technological frontier innovating more.