Abstract: This paper analyses the impact of “green regulations” – i.e. those aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change and environmental externalities – on innovation, using a novel regulatory database covering the period 2008-2022 for Spain. The database identifies regulations at both the national and regional levels through textual analysis. Employing a panel data approach, we assess how different types of environmental regulations – particularly those related to renewable energy – affect firm-level innovation activities. Our findings indicate that national-level green regulations have a positive effect on innovation, whereas regional-level regulations show mixed or negligible impacts. Importantly, the interaction between national and regional regulations, measuring the simultaneous production of legal texts at both levels, can foster innovation but at a reduced pace with respect to the sole production of regulation at the national level. Given the results for regional-level regulation, our findings provide evidence in favour of the hypothesis that regulatory fragmentation due to unequal, overlapping, inconsistent or conflicting procedure across jurisdictions may diminish these benefits.
