Inventors’ Personal Experience of Natural Disasters and Green Innovation (joint with Lisa Keding)
We show that personal experiences affect high-stakes economic decisions among inventors. Using patent and survey data from French and German inventors linked to natural disaster records, we exploit exogenous variation in disaster exposure. Inventors who experience natural disasters produce 8.1\% more green patents, mainly emission-reducing mitigation technologies, while non-green innovation remains unaffected. The absence of sizable spatial spillovers highlights the importance of personal experience. Disasters shape innovation by altering profitability expectations through shifting higher-order beliefs about consumer demand and anticipated regulation. Our model predicts, and the data confirm, that effects are strongest in competitive markets, where profit incentives matter most.
2024 Best Paper Award - Ivey-ARCS PhD Sustainability Academy
2025 YEP Doctoral Paper Award - ECONtribute (Universities Bonn & Cologne)
This paper supersedes an earlier version that was circulated under the title ”The Effects of Natural Disasters on Green Innovation”