The Effect of Academic Freedom on Green Patenting by Different Participants of the National Innovation System Moderated by Corruption

At the backdrop of encroachments on democratic values, including academic freedom, global environmental challenges, and a growing patent output, this paper investigates the effect of academic freedom on green patenting. We zoom into the green patent filings generated by different participants of the national innovation system: universities, government funded research institutes, individual inventors and companies. By incorporating corruption as a moderator, we explore whether corruption amplifies or dampens the positive impact of academic freedom on green invention. Our results reveal that academic freedom generally increases the number of green patent applications, but the effect is different for different types of applicants. Individuals, universities and research institutions overall seem to benefit from greater academic freedom especially in the models containing the interaction between academic freedom and corruption. Our main conclusion is that academic freedom is conducive to green patenting especially accompanied by low levels of corruption. However, companies respond to a complex set of incentives and engage in diverse innovation strategies. We offer our explanations and shed light on the complexity of factors involved and their interactions.