文章基本信息

标题：Strategic Conflicts on the Horizon: R&D Incentives for Environmental Technologies
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作者：Daniel Heyen
期刊名称：Discussion Paper Series / Universität Heidelberg, Department of Economics
出版年度：2015
出版社：Universität Heidelberg, Department of Economics
摘要：Technological innovation is a key strategy for tackling environmental problems. The required R&D expenditures however are substantial and fall on self-interested coun- tries. Thus, the prospects of successful innovation critically depend on innovation incentives. This paper focuses on a specific mechanism for strategic distortions in this R&D game. In this mechanism, the outlook of future con.icts surrounding technology deployment directly impacts on the willingness to undertake R&D. Apart from free-riding, a di.erent deployment con.ict with distortive e.ects on innovation may occur: Low deployment costs and heterogeneous preferences might give rise to 'free-driving'. In this recently considered possibility (Weitzman 2012), the country with the highest preference for technology deployment, the free-driver, may domi- nate the deployment outcome to the detriment of others. The present paper develops a simple two stage model for analyzing how technology deployment con.icts, free- riding and free-driving, shape R&D incentives of two asymmetric countries. The framework gives rise to rich findings, underpinning the narrative that future de- ployment con.icts pull forward to the R&D stage. While the outlook of free-riding unambiguously weakens innovation incentives, the findings for free-driving are more complex, including the possibility of super-optimal R&D and incentives for counter- R&D.
关键词：Environmental Innovation; R&D Game; Innovation Incentives; Exter- ; nalities; Strategic Con.icts; Climate Engineering