financialisation income distribution and aggregate demand in the usa this paper investigates the effects of financialisation and functional income distribution on aggregate demand in the usa by estimating the effects of the increase in rentier income dividends and interest payments and housing and financial wealth on consumption and investment the redistribution of income in favour of profits suppresses consumption whereas the increase in the rentier income and wealth has positive effects a higher rentier income decreases investment without the wealth effects the overall effect of the changes in distribution on aggregate demand would have been negative thus a pro capital income distribution leads to a slightly negative effect on growth i e the usa economy is moderately wage led

baumol s disease and dematerialization of the economy this paper argues that there is reason to be skeptical about the idea that the transition to a service economy will bring about dematerialization of production and consequent environmental improvement this is because the shift to a service economy is an illusion in terms of real production but is instead generated by the fall in the price of manufacturing goods relative to services which is in turn caused by more rapid productivity growth in manufacturing than in services this argument relies on the insights baumol provided on the nature of the service economy and uses swedish long term data on relative sectoral development as an empirical illustration on the other hand the paper argues that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that structural change may bring about a greening of growth namely the changes in growth patterns sometimes labeled the third industrial revolution which is connected to the emergence of microelectronics swedish co2 emissions show a decline after 1970 which is mainly explained by a politically driven change in the mix of energy carriers but is also related to the stabilization of energy consumption this energy stabilization was caused by slow growth of the economy in conjunction with substantial declines in energy intensity within industrial sectors and an absence of relative growth of the heavy sectors a growth that had marked the economy between 1870 and 1970 microelectronics have contributed to permanently transforming the swedish industrial sector in a lighter direction reducing energy losses in heavy industries and stabilizing household energy consumption so it appears as if there may be some environmental gains from this development that was initiated in the 1970s but not from relatively more production in the service sector

international competition income distribution and economic growth this paper shows that the neo keynesian case for wage led growth does not generally hold in an open economy model wage increases cause a loss of competitiveness that reduces the trade balance if the economy is relatively open to trade and price elasticities satisfy certain restrictions the worsening of the trade balance more than outweighs the increase in workers consumption thus reducing the growth rate the main theoretical innovation is a flexible markup pricing rule that allows changes in unit labor costs and exchange rates to affect profit margins implications for international relations and class conflict are discussed copyright 1989 by oxford university press

innovation complementarity and environmental productivity effects reality or delusion evidence from the eu abstract innovation is a key element behind the achievement of desired environmental and economic performances regarding co2 mitigation strategies would require cuts in emissions of around 80 90 with respect to 1990 by 2050 in the eu we investigate whether complementarity namely integration between the adoption of environmental innovation measures and other technological and organizational innovations is a factor that has supported reduction in co2 emissions per value added that is environmental productivity we merge new eu innovation and wiod data to assess the innovation effects on sector co2 performances at a wide eu level we find that jointly adopting different innovations is not a widespread factor behind increases in environmental productivity nevertheless even though complementarity is not a low hanging fruit a case where innovation complementarity arises is for manufacturing sectors that integrate eco innovations with product innovations one example of this integrated action is a strategy that pursues energy efficiency with product value enhancement we believe that the lack of integrated innovation adoption behind environmental productivity performance is a signal of the current weaknesses economies face in tackling climate change and green economy challenges incremental rather than more radical strategies have predominated so far the latter have been confined to industrial niches in terms of the number of involved firms this is probably insufficient when we look at long term economic and environmental goals

linking namea and input output for consumption vs production perspective analyses evidence on emission efficiency and aggregation biases using the italian and spanish environmental accounts we integrate input output and namea tables for spain and italy in 1995 2000 and 2005 in order to address the hot policy issue of sustainable consumption and production a comparison of production and consumption perspectives may have relevant policy implications we deal with the domestic technology assumption and primarily the aggregation bias that may result when calculating indirect emission using different sector aggregations in the analyses e g 16 30 50 extended input output analysis provides analyses of the emissions embodied in domestic consumption and domestic production by considering the structure of intermediate inputs and environmental efficiency in each production sector our empirical findings show that different sectoral aggregation significantly biases the amount of emissions for the consumption perspective though differently in the two countries italy surprisingly show consumption production ratios around or lower than one but in line with some major work at eu level our results thus suggest that special attention must be paid when interpreting the ee ioa of country estimated amounts of embodied emissions both in domestic final demand and those directly associated with the production sectors when the sectoral aggregation level has a low definition as considered in some recent similar studies

the deindustrialisation tertiarisation hypothesis reconsidered a subsystem application to the oecd7 the diffusion of outsourcing both national and international and vertical fdis among manufacturing firms along with the higher integra tion of business services in manufacturing has recently led to question the empirical evidence supporting the deindustrialisation tertiarisation dt hypothesis rather than a real phenomenon it has been argued dt would be an apparent one mainly due to the reorganization of production across national and sectoral boundaries the empirical studies that have dealt with the topic so far have not been able to effectively rule out such possibility because of two main limitations the sectoral level of the analysis and or the national focus in order to overcome them the paper carries out an appreciative investigation of the actual extent of the dt occurred in the oecd area over the 80s and the 90s by moving from a sector to a subsystem perspective thus retaining both direct and indirect relations and by referring to a pseudo world of 7 oecd countries thus taking into account the global dimension of the phenomenon the results strongly support the dt hypothesis although the weight of business sector services in the manufacturing subsystem increased acting as a counterbalancing tendency to the manufacturing decline subsystem shares significantly decreased thus confirming dt as a more fundamental trend of modern economies

stagnation income distribution and monopoly power the deceleration in the rate of industrial growth in the indian economy since the middlesixties initially interpreted by some as a temporary downward deviation from trend hasnow come to be generally accepted as reflecting long run tendencies towards stagnation several explanations for these tendencies have been offered bhagwati and desai 1970 and bhagwati and srinivasan 1975 have focused on inefficiencies and the misallocationof resources arising from industrial policies pursued by the government others chakravarty 1974 raj 1976 and vaidyanathan 1974 among them have emphasisedthe sluggishness of agricultural growth which is alleged to have retarded industrial growthby limiting markets and the supply of wage goods and raw materials a third view reflectedin srinivasan and narayana 1977 for example has put the blame on a slackening of invest ment demand due to lower public investment but does not explain why public investmentfell or why its fall restrained industrial growth finally there is the explanation put forthin bagchi 1970 1975 1982 in nayyar 1978 and in parts of mitra 1977 that inequali ties in income distribution have resulted in a limited demand for industrial goods reducedincentives for investment and therefore reduced growth this view seems to suggest apositive relation between growth and income equality which is opposed to the generallyaccepted idea derived from cambridge growth models that higher growth requires greaterinequality the purpose of this paper is to examine the last explanation by considering the inter action between growth and income distribution in an underdeveloped economy with thehelp of a simple macroeconomic model the model is a stylisation of the indian economy so that we will be able to use the model to assess the argument that a deceleration in therate of growth of the indian industrial economy could have been caused by an unequaldistribution of income the argument will not be made that this income distributional con straint is the binding constraint on industrial growth the model will merely examine theinternal consistency of the argument that a bad income distribution could explain stagnation in the sense of reduced growth and show that in the indian context as in other similarcontexts this argument can be put forward in explaining stagnation our argument is first presented with a highly simplified schematisation of the indianeconomy which we shall call the basic model the economy modelled produces only one

a synthetic stock flow consistent macroeconomic model of financialisation this article is centred around the notions of shareholder value orientation and financialisation shareholder value orientation is reflected by a high dividend payout ratio applied by firms and the reluctance of firms to finance physical investment via new equity issues financialisation is the more general development towards an increased importance of the financial sector of the economy relative to the non financial sector in this article a synthetic stock flow consistent model is developed that attempts to encompass some important recent works on the effects of financialisation this includes contributions from the fields of mainstream information economics and post keynesian economics we conduct simulations reflecting increased shareholder value orientation and show that the results are consistent with important stylised facts copyright the author 2008 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

income inequality in the united states 1913 1998 this paper presents new homogeneous series on top shares of income and wages from 1913 to 1998 in the united states using individual tax returns data top income and wages shares display a u shaped pattern over the century our series suggest that the large shocks that capital owners experienced during the great depression and world war ii have had a permanent effect on top capital incomes we argue that steep progressive income and estate taxation may have prevented large fortunes from fully recovering from these shocks top wage shares were flat before world war ii dropped precipitously during the war and did not start to recover before the late 1960s but are now higher than before world war ii as a result the working rich have replaced the rentiers at the top of the income distribution

financialisation and capital accumulation in the non financial corporate sector a theoretical and empirical investigation on the us economy 1973 2003 recent research has explored the growing financialization process in the u s and other advanced economies the term is a catch all phrase used to denote important changes in the structure of non financial corporations balance sheets including the growth of income from financial subsidiaries and investment as well as growth in the transfer of earnings to financial markets in the forms of interest payments dividend payments and stock buybacks this paper seeks to empirically explore the relationship between financialization in the u s economy and real investment at the firm level using data from a sample of non financial corporations from 1973 to 2003 i find a negative relationship between real investment and financialization first increased financial investment and increased financial profit opportunities may have crowded out real investment by changing the incentives of firm managers and directing funds away from real investment second increased payments to the financial markets may have impeded real investment by decreasing available internal funds shortening the planning horizons of the firm management and increasing uncertainty these two channels can help explain the negative relationship i find between investment and financialization

macroeconomic implications of financialisation a growing literature suggests that financialisation may weaken the performance of non financial corporations and constrain the growth of aggregate demand this paper uses two alternative approaches one derived from skott and one from lavoie and godley and two different settings a labour constrained setting and a dual economy setting to evaluate some of the claims that have been made our analysis which pays explicit attention to financial stock flow relations suggests that the qualitative effects of financialisation are insensitive to the precise specification of household saving behaviour but depend critically on the labour market assumptions labour constrained versus dual and the specification of the investment function harrodian versus kaleckian

environmental innovations and profitability how does it pay to be green an empirical analysis on the german innovation survey much of the empirical literature analysing the relation between environmental innovation and competitiveness has focused on the question whether it pays to be green we differentiate between different types of environmental innovations which will be disentangled in those aiming at reducing the negative externalities and those allowing for efficiency increases and cost savings what we analyze is at first the extent to which these two typologies have impacts on firms profitability with opposite signs and secondly whether the motivations driving the adoption of those innovations make the difference in terms of economic gains we find empirical evidence that both the typology of environmental innovation and the driver of their adoption affect the sign of the relationship between competitiveness and environmental performance the empirical strategy is based on a sample of german firms and makes use of a merge of two waves of the mannheim innovation panel in 2011 and 2009 that allow overcoming some endogeneity issues which may arise in a cross section setting

functional income distribution and aggregate demand in the euro area an increase in the wage share has contradictory effects on the subaggregates of aggregate demand private consumption expenditures ought to increase because wage incomes typically are associated with higher consumption propensities than capital incomes investment expenditures ought to be negatively affected because investment will positively depend on profits net exports will be negatively affected because an increase in the wage share corresponds to an increase in unit labour costs and thus a loss in competitiveness therefore theoretically aggregate demand can be either wage led or profit led depending on how these effects add up the results will crucially depend on how open the economy is internationally the paper estimates a post kaleckian macro model incorporating these effects for the euro area and finds that the euro area is presently in a wage led demand regime implications for wage policies are discussed

characterizing the policy mix and its impact on eco innovation a patent analysis of energy efficient technologies abstract this paper provides an empirical investigation of the role played by selected characteristics of the policy mix in inducing innovation in energy efficiency technologies an original dataset covering 23 oecd countries over the period 1990 2010 combines the full set of policies in the energy efficiency domain for the residential sector with data on patents applied over the same period in this specific technological sector the econometric results suggest that when the policy mix is characterised by a more balanced use in demand pull and technology push instruments its positive effects on eco innovation tend to be greater moreover a more comprehensive policy mix is shown to be able to enhance innovation activities for the generation of new energy efficient technologies however the simple addition of an indiscriminate number of simultaneous policy instruments may reduce policy mix effectiveness finally the empirical findings confirm previous evidence on the importance of policy spillover effects and suggest that policy similarity between countries may represent an important aspect to be accounted for in policy mix design

investigating policy and r d effects on environmental innovation a meta analysis in the last decades a wide research effort has been devoted at the analysis of the determinants of environmental innovation ei whereas agreement seemed to emerge around a cluster of determinants mainly technology push market pull policy push pull and firm specific factors empirical analyses have failed to provide strong confirmation on the relevance of some core variables after a qualitative discussion of this literature we empirically assess it by exploiting meta regression analysis techniques to test the effectiveness of two determinants policy and r d our findings are clear as for the first we show that only certain types of policy have proven to affect ei in particular regulatory stringency as for r d we show that the use of estimation methods is not neutral to the outcome of the primary studies

inequality the great recession and slow recovery rising inequality reduced income growth for the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution beginning about 1980 but that group s consumption growth did not fall proportionally instead lower saving led to increasing balance sheet fragility for the bottom 95 percent eventually triggering the great recession we decompose consumption and saving across income groups the consumptionincome ratio of the bottom 95 percent fell sharply in the recession consistent with tighter borrowing constraints the top 5 percent ratio rose consistent with consumption smoothing the inability of the bottom 95 percent to generate adequate demand helps explain the slow recovery

environmental innovations in services manufacturing services integration and policy transmissions abstract this paper investigates the relevant factors behind the almost unexplored realm of environmental innovation in services using a dataset of 8161 italian service firms specifically we test whether manufacturing services integration matters for environmental innovations in addition taking account for the heterogeneity of the service industries we analyse whether environmental policies for manufacturing transmit induced innovation effects to services our findings show that i the drivers of environmental innovations related to carbon abatement and energy efficiency differ across industries and ii cooperation training environmental management systems and public funding play key roles in these processes the integration of services and manufacturing through push and pull effects and the environmental policy transmission effect from manufacturing to services generally do not seem to have a positive impact on the diffusion of environmental innovations

the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments a typical case of the blind men and the elephant abstract in this paper we examine the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments in four literatures theoretical models on incentives for eco innovation econometric studies based on observed data survey analysis based on stated information and technology case studies the aim of this paper is to critically examine the methods and the results we argue that the case studies literature even when its results are specific and difficult to generalise is a necessary source of empirical evidence about policy impacts and the factors responsible for these impacts pointing to issues that are neglected in the theoretical and econometric literature such as the specifics of the innovation context and policy interaction effects the paper states five synthesised findings and makes a plea for multi method analysis one other important synthesised finding is that the influence of market based instruments on innovation such as emission trading and taxes is far weaker than assumed

emerging green tech specializations and clusters a network analysis on technological innovation at the metropolitan level abstract current models of production and energy use are promoting an effervescent green technology green tech market focused on innovation and improved environmental performance most green tech firms are innovative start ups or small and medium sized enterprises smes characterized by large intangible assets and technological uncertainty which makes it difficult to identify their research and development r d and innovation paths in addition green tech companies tend to aggregate spatially and throughout the world clusters are increasingly seen as a strategy to foster innovative production and r d activities and stimulate a sustainable energy transition this paper investigates green tech companies in san francisco new york and london to identify their specialization and underlying technological and or market complementarities and emerging aggregates and specific clusters based on information from crunchbase and the web we propose a network analysis using metadata on technological innovations produced by green tech companies in these three metropolitan areas metadata are keywords and terms that help to describe an item and in the database they identify the products services and technologies driving innovation the main metrics of the networks identified at both node and network level are discussed from an economic perspective the approach helps in the design and implementation of targeted and information based local policies and facilitates closer relationships between innovative companies suppliers and clients venture capitalists large corporations and research laboratories involved in the green tech industry

a stagnationist model of economic growth in an economy subject to persistent excess capacity demand related factors will play a key role in determining patterns of secular change this thesis has a long history in econ omics sometimes in the underworld and occasionally at the height of fashion as recounted by rowthorn 1982 recent manifestations in the first world are the theories of monopoly capitalism of baran and sweezy 1966 and steindl 1952 who in turn follow kalecki 1971 hobson 1902 luxemburg 1951 and the marx of realisation crises and reproduction schemes in volume ii of capital other radicals such as boddy and crotty 1975 add a profit squeeze explanation of the cycle which underlays the dynamics of the growth model specified here in developing countries difficulties in both realisation and sectoral proportions are emphasised as obstacles to growth witness lustig s 1980 review of latin american structuralist theory and dutt s 1984 model which formalises an ongoing controversy in india about how income redistribution might affect prospects for industrialisation all these authors are stagnationist in assuming that both the growth rate and the level of capacity utilisation can be different under different conditions of income distribution and or macroeconomic policy their preferred policies will presumably lead to greater equality increase utilisation or step up growth they typically ask two analytical ques tions how does output respond in the short run to shifts in the income distribution how do output adjustments feed back into distributional dynamics especially under conditions when price and wage inflation rates may be influenced by employment levels productivity changes and conflicting income claims in what follows we set out a simple model to address these questions and explore the implications for macroeconomic policy of the answers that arise since the approach is not familiar to economists with a standard training a verbal description of the growth model is given first those who wish to jump directly into a formal presentation can proceed to section 1 output x is assumed to meet demand in an instantaneous short run we measure activity as the ratio of firms net cash inflow to the value of capital stock i e the rate of profit r during the short run the price level p is fixed by a mark up rule p 1 x wb where r is the mark up rate w the money wage and b the labor output ratio with this rule the share of profits or mark up income in the value of output is r l t let u stand for the output capital ratio or capacity utilization xik by simple identity

distribution and growth reconsidered empirical results for six oecd countries we analyse the relationship between functional income distribution and economic growth in austria france germany the netherlands the uk and the usa from 1960 until 2005 the analysis is based on a demand driven distribution and growth model for an open economy inspired by bhaduri and marglin which allows for either profit or wage led growth we find that growth in france germany the uk and the usa has been wage led whereas austria and the netherlands have been profit led in the case of austria a domestically wage led economy changes to profit led when including the effect of distribution on external trade the netherlands however are already profit led without external trade our results so far only partially confirm bhaduri and marglin s theoretical conclusion that wage led growth becomes less feasible when the effects of distribution on foreign trade are taken into account

determinants of labour s income share in the era of financialisation numerous studies have analysed the decline in the labour share of income but only few have linked it to the increase in financialisation the process of financialisation can roughly be described as an increasing importance of the financial sector that had an impact on the distribution between wages and profits on the one hand and retained earnings and financial income in the form of dividends and interests on the other hand this article seeks to explore the relationship between financialisation and labour s share of income using a time series cross sectional dataset of 13 countries over the time period from 1986 until 2007 the results suggest that there is indeed a relationship between increasing dividend and interest payments of non financial corporations and the decline of the share of wages in national income other factors that can account for the decline relate to globalisation and a decrease in the bargaining power of labour

the effects of financialization on investment evidence from firm level data for the uk this paper estimates the effects of financialization on physical investment in the uk using panel data based on balance sheets of publicly listed non financial companies supplied by worldscope for the period 1985 2013 we find robust evidence of an adverse effect of not only financial payments interests and dividends but also financial incomes on the rate of accumulation the negative impacts of financial incomes from interests and dividends are particularly strong for the pre crisis period our findings support the financialization thesis that the increasing orientation of the non financial sector towards financial activities is ultimately leading to lower physical investment hence to stagnant or fragile growth as well as long term concerns for productivity

determinants of environmental innovation new evidence from german panel data sources abstract in most cases empirical analyses of environmental innovations based on firm level data relied on surveys for one point in time these surveys allow for the inclusion of many explanatory variables such as different policy instruments or the influence of pressure groups but it is not possible to address the dynamic character of environmental innovations this paper uses two german panel databases the establishment panel of the institute for employment research iab and the mannheim innovation panel mip of the centre for european economic research zew to explore the determinants of environmental innovations the econometric estimations show that the improvement of the technological capabilities knowledge capital by r d triggers environmental innovations environmental regulation environmental management tools and general organizational changes also encourage environmental innovation a result that has also been postulated by the famous porter hypothesis

financialisation and tendencies towards stagnation the role of macroeconomic regime changes in the course of and after the financial and economic crisis 2007 09

towards an accounting view on money banking and the macroeconomy history empirics theory in this paper three views are considered which are traditionally associated with money cranks and brave heretics the first is that the credit nature of money has macroeconomic significance the second is that financial development can be bad for economic growth the third is that macroeconomic models need to be explicitly monetary macroeconomic models it is argued that in each of these three areas there has been a recent shift in mainstream economic opinion this suggests new opportunities for meaningful debate between heterodox and orthodox schools on money and finance it is further argued following skaggs 2003 that a common meeting ground could be an accounting view of economics this is a mode of macroeconomic analysis which explicitly uses accounting definitions identities that credit is also debt or that flows of a variable affect the stock of that variable or accounting methods e g decomposing different kinds of liabilities or linking flows of liquidity to flows of transactions to structure and direct the analysis the accounting view is highly pluralist yet clearly defined i discuss its applications to each of the three views

unemployment and the real wage the economic basis for contesting political ideologies using the keynesian theory of effective demand this paper demonstrates how particular models such as that of cooperative capitalism enunciated by the left keynesian social democrats the marxian model of profit squeeze emphasizing distributive conflict and even the conservative model relying on supply side stimulus fit in as particular variants of a more general theoretical scheme through a reconstruction of the familiar is schedule the argument is weaved around the theme of the relations between unemployment and real wage in the context of both a closed and an open economy to explain the common macroeconomic basis of contesting ideologies copyright 1990 by oxford university press

financialisation and the slowdown of accumulation over the past decades financial investment of non financial businesses has been rising and accumulation of capital goods has been declining the first part of the paper offers a novel theory to explain this phenomenon financialization the shareholder revolution and the development of a market for corporate control have shifted power to shareholders and thus changed management priorities leading to a reduction in the desired growth rate in the second part the link between accumulation and financialization is tested econometrically by means of a time series analysis of aggregate business investment for usa uk france and germany extensive test of robustness are performed for the first three countries evidence that confirms the negative effect of financialization on accumulation is found author s abstract

green technologies and environmental productivity a cross sectoral analysis of direct and indirect effects in italian regions abstract this paper provides empirical investigation of the effects of environmental innovations eis on environmental performances as proxied by the environmental productivity ep measure we focus on sectoral environmental productivity of italian regions by exploiting the regional accounting matrix including environmental accounts regional namea patent applications have been extracted by the patstat database and assigned to the environmental domain by adopting different international classifications of green technologies the latest release of the oecd env tech indicators and the union of this with the previously established wipo green inventory econometric results outline that regions sectors characterized by higher levels of green technologies gts are those facing better environmental performance these positive effects directly stem from the introduction of gt in the same sector as well as from the introduction of gt in vertically related sectors

is environmental innovation embedded within high performance organisational changes the role of human resource management and complementarity in green business strategies abstract this paper investigates whether firms joint implementation of organisational innovation and training may foster their adoption of environmental innovation ei and if this correlation falls within porter hypothesis ph framework we study the relationship of complementarity between strategies of high performance work practices hpwp and human resource management hrm when ei adoption is the firms objective using an original dataset on 555 italian industrial firms regarding ei hpwp and hrm coherent with the last cis2006 2008 survey results show that sector specificity matter the only case in which strict complementarity is observed in organisational change concerns co 2 abatement a relatively complex type of ei but this is true only when the sample is restricted to more polluting and regulated sectors this evidence is coherent with the porter hypothesis complementarity related adoption of ei is an element of organisational change in firms that are subject to more stringent environmental regulations nevertheless the fact that strict complementarity is not a diffuse factor behind the adoption of all environmental innovation indeed does not come as a surprise at this stage in the development of green strategies the share of eco firms is still limited even in advanced countries that are seeking tools for a new competitiveness the full integration of eis within the internal capabilities and firm s own assets is far from being reached even in advanced and competitive industrial settings

what do we know about investment under uncertainty recent theoretical developments relating to investment under uncertainty have highlighted the importance of irreversibility for the timing of investment expenditures and their expected returns this has subsequently stimulated a growing empirical literature which examines uncertainty and threshold effects on investment behaviour this paper presents a review of this literature a variety of methods have been used to investigate the empirical implication of irreversibility in investment the majority focusing on the relationship between investment flows and proxy measures of uncertainty a general conclusion is that increased uncertainty at both aggregate and disaggregate levels leads to lower investment rates this suggests that there is an irreversibility effect under which greater uncertainty raises the value of the call option to delay a commitment to investment this effect appears to dominate any positive impact on investment arising from the fact that greater uncertability under certain circumstances increases the marginal profitability of capital the methods used raise a number of issues which call into question the reliability of the findings and these are addressed in the paper however if such irreversibility effects are present then their omission from traditional investment models casts doubt on the efficacy of such specifications jel classification d81 d92 e22

what drives eco innovators a critical review of the empirical literature based on econometric methods abstract the aim of this paper is to provide a critical review of the literature on the econometric analyses of firm level determinants to eco innovation the review reveals some gaps in knowledge first an integrated theoretical framework which merges the insights from different approaches is missing second the influence of some variables is still unsettled demand pull and cost savings whereas others have hardly been included in previous analyses internal and international factors third studies on the drivers to eco innovation versus general innovation are relatively scarce with respect to those on the drivers to eco innovation in general fourth analyses of the relevance of different determinants to eco innovation for distinct eco innovator and eco innovation types have largely been missing fifth studies on middle income and developing countries are still scarce sixth the econometric analyses have relied on microeconometric methods based on cross section data mostly logit and probit models whereas the use of panel data is virtually absent seventh detailed econometric analyses on the distinct drivers and barriers to eco innovation in different sectors and regions have not been performed so far finally whether the position of the firm in the value chain and the market structure influence the propensity to eco innovate are largely unexplored topics