This paper examines the relationship between management quality and clean and dirty innovation, using the U.S. manufacturers’ patent data from 1999-2006. First, this paper investigates whether firms with higher management quality participate more actively in clean innovation in terms of patents. Second, this paper examines whether firms with higher management quality have higher quality innovation or cite more clean
patents in terms of total clean citations and clean patents per citation. The empirical results show that: (i) there is a positive correlation between management quality and clean innovation; and (ii) this paper find consistently evidence supporting a positive correlation between management quality and clean citations in terms of total clean citations and clean patents per citation.