Working Papers and other projects
Currently, I am working on topics of environmental microeconomics and innovation. The core areas of my investigation include eco-innovation and the role of new technologies in steering the green transition, as well as markets for carbon credits and transition policies for carbon-intensive sectors. As a reference sector I am currently covering the electricity markets and stochastic frontier estimations for firms in regulated sectors. I am also working on carbon capture & storage technologies and their impacts on firms active in the oil and energy industries. I am also working on industrial organization issues related to innovation, focusing in particular on the role of sector concentration and technological diversity. I am interested in inequalities and social implications of green economic policies. I mainly work with data.
Below you can find working papers with links to latest available drafts as well as ideas I would like to develop in the next future.
Working Papers
"Does carbon capture & storage mitigate carbon premium? Evidence from patents" (with L. Rondi, 2025)
Motivated by recent evidence of a carbon risk premium (Bolton & Kacperczyc, 2021), we analyze firm-level patenting in Carbon Capture Utilization \& Storage (CCUS) technologies and its impact on stock market performance from 2010 to 2022. Using zero-inflated Poisson regressions on patent and financial data and CO2 emissions, we find CCUS patents respond to CO2 emissions and climate policies. Moreover, although CCUS patents are negatively (positively) related with market-to-book (stock returns), we find that the effect turns if the firm is a high CO2 emitter and environmental regulation is tighter. Our findings suggest that CCUS innovation reduces the carbon risk premium, benefiting firms with higher environmental risks.
"Does R&D concentration reduce technological diversity? Evidence from global top innovators" (2025)
This paper investigates whether increasing concentration of R&D expenditure among the world's largest innovators reduces the technological diversity of their innovation output. Using firm-level data from the JRC COR&DIP Top 2000 Innovators matched with patent information from PATSTAT (2010–2022), I construct indicators of sectoral R\&D concentration, firm-level technological diversity, and innovation system dynamism. R&D concentration is measured through a Herfindahl–Hirschman Index of sectoral R&D spending, while diversity is captured by a normalized Shannon entropy index of patent portfolios across technological fields. The unbalanced nature of the dataset — where firms enter and exit the global top-2000 ranking over time — is exploited to derive indicators of entry, exit, and rank turbulence as proxies for innovation dynamics. Regression results with country and year fixed effects show that higher sectoral R\&D concentration is significantly associated with lower firm-level technological diversity, suggesting that dominant incumbents focus their innovation efforts within narrower technological trajectories. Conversely, larger and more capital-intensive firms tend to display broader technological portfolios, likely exploiting economies of scope. Overall, the findings indicate that growing R&D concentration may undermine technological variety, with implications for innovation and competition policy.
"Government financing and innovation crowding-out in the EU CCS sector" (2025)
This paper explores the interplay between government subsidies for projects and private innovation within the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCUS) sector, particularly focusing on how regional sectoral integration and concentration influence innovation output. Regions with integrated industrial sectors feature higher openness and more partnerships, and are expected to utilize sector-specific funds more efficiently, fostering innovation. Conversely, concentrated sectors, with strong barriers to entry, might reduce innovation efforts to maximize profits from existing technologies. To investigate these hypotheses, sectoral integration and concentration indexes for the CCUS industry are computed using various economic indicators at the EU regional level. A Poisson panel regression analysis is employed to test the association of these factors with innovation output. The results indicate that while the effect of concentration is generally insignificant, sectoral integration positively influences innovation. However, when considering non-linear interactions with policy incentives, the data reveals a nuanced picture: higher number (and magnitude) of policy incentives tend to crowd out private innovation in concentrated sectors, whereas they stimulate innovation in highly integrated sectors. These findings highlight the importance of sectoral structure in shaping the effectiveness of industrial policy to foster innovation. Moreover, to take care of potential endogeneity in the announcement of policy, an event-study design is employed. Results suggest a crowding-out effect of project subsidies on the level of innovation.
"What drives the success or failure of CCU projects?"" (with L.Rondi, M.Illich & R. Monaco, 2025)
Carbon Capture (Usage) and Storage are key technological options to mitigate CO2 emissions. They can be applied to many different sectors, mainly highly polluting ones. This paper studies what factors drive the technological progress and the success of Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) projects by focussing on organizational structure – vertical integration, product diversification and partnerships – ownership and environmental policy as drivers of successful completion. CCU projects capture the CO2 for direct reuse in industrial processes or as a feedstock to produce chemical components, sustainable cement, polymers, fertilizers, e-fuels. Thus, CCU can be a lever for industrial decarbonization and meets more favourable public perception and acceptance than CCS. We construct a dataset of CCU projects, and we estimate what project characteristics are associated with higher Technology Readiness Level and advancement. Then we use survival analysis to study what affects the probability that the project reaches its expected objective. Our results show that the structure and organization of the project -namely, the interaction between vertical integration, diversification and partnership size - as well as the environmental policy – particularly, public incentives to low carbon R&D expenditures - affect the technological progress and the probability of success of CCU projects.
"Green transition and decarbonization: the role of CCUS projects" (with L.Rondi & M.Illich, 2025)
Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) technologies are critical for achieving decarbonization and carbon neutrality, yet implementing effective projects remains complex and costly. Using the IEA’s CCUS projects database (1990-2023), we study the factors explaining why certain countries attract more projects, why CCUS projects are more concentrated in specific industries and how organizational choices affect their implementation and scale. We find that the recent surge in CCUS initiatives has occurred particularly in oil & gas, agrochemicals, and materials sectors, and that different policy frameworks in the EU and North America may have lead to different deployment in these regions. Focusing on corporate strategies, we observe that even the largest companies collaborate within project hub, leveraging combined expertise and competences across sectors, and that project deployment and capture capacity vary by organizational structure, location, and scope of the value chain. Finally, a preliminary assessment of the potential to reduce GHG emissions by 2030 shows that the current number and scale of projects fall short of climate targets, highlighting the need for stronger public support and more efficient capture technologies.
"Green and brown CCUS patents. Is the stock market color-blind?"" (with L.Rondi, 2025)
This paper investigates if the stock market acknowledges the difference between green and non-green innovation in Carbon Capture Utilization & Storage (CCUS) technolo- gies by requiring a different carbon risk premium to patenting firms. Building on evidence that CCUS patents reduce the carbon risk premium of companies with higher CO2 emissions (Barchi and Rondi, 2024), we focus on the environmental content of CCUS patents by discriminating between green and non-green patents. Matching patent data with financial and CO2 emission data for a worldwide panel of CCUS patenting listed companies (2010-2021), we estimate the impact of green and ”brown” patents on firm market value and total returns. Results confirm that the carbon-risk mitigating effect of CCUS patenting is stronger within carbon-intensive firms. However, there is weak evidence that stock markets discern the ”colour” of CCUS patents, as our (preliminary) results show that, for high emitters, both kinds of innovations are valu- able for the stock market. This suggests different motivations behind the appreciation of the innovative effort, one that awards a forward-looking view for truly green patents and the other compensating the value-maximization view for non-green patents that reduce the transition costs or enhance fuel efficiency of high-emitting firms in carbon- intensive industries. So in the end, the stock market could be cross-eyed instead of colorblind.
Published Papers
Still nothing happening here, yet do not lose hope!