‘Better late than never’: the interplay between green technology and age for firm growth

This paper investigates the relationship between green/non-green technologies and firm growth. By combining the literature on eco-innovations, industrial organisation and entrepreneurial studies, we examine the dependence of this relationship on the pace at which firms grow and the age of the firm. From a dataset of 5498 manufacturing firms in Italy for the period of 2000–2008, longitudinal fixed effects quantile models are estimated, in which the firm’s age is set to moderate the effects of green and non-green patents on employment growth. We find that the positive effect of green technologies on growth is greater than that of non-green technologies. However, this result does not apply to struggling and rapidly growing firms. With fast-growing (above the median) firms, age moderates the growth effect of green technologies. Inconsistent with the extant literature, this moderation effect is positive: firm experience appears important for the growth benefits of green technologies, possibly relative to the complexity of their management.