Convergence of environmental innovation in Europe with or without United Kingdom: Technological implications for the environment

Abstract

This study analyzes the convergence of environmental innovation for 21 European Union countries and the United Kingdom during the period 1992–2021. We contribute to the literature by looking at the convergence of two different variations of environmental innovation-environmental innovation per capita and environmental innovation intensity. We have used three convergence testing approaches-stochastic, beta, and sigma convergence methods. Our empirical results based on these three approaches generally suggest convergence in environmental innovation. Further, our findings based on the beta convergence method suggest that environmental innovation depends on CO2 emissions per capita, real gross domestic product per capita, financial development, and institutional quality of each country.