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This paper investigates the forces correlated with environmental innovations (EIs) introduced by firms in local production systems (LPS). The role of inter-firm network relationships, agglomeration economies and internationalization strategies is jointly analysed for a sample of 555 firms in the EmiliaRomagna (ER) region (North-East Italy). Cooperating with a certain kind of local actors-i.e. suppliers and universities-is the most important EI driver for the investigated firms, along with their training coverage and their adoption of information and communication technologies. The role of agglomeration economies is instead less clear-cut. They spur EIs only in the presence of established LPS, with idiosyncratic sector specialization, while conversely they act as EI barriers. Networking effects and agglomeration economies are instead found to strongly promote the adoption of EIs by multinational firms, thus highlighting the importance of local -global interactions. Interesting specifications for these results are found for particular kinds of EIs, in such fields as CO 2 abatement and ISO labelling, generally extending the analysis of EI drivers by joining local and international factors. In addition, the role of regulatory sector factors confirms the induced innovation hypothesis and provides a robustness check to our results.

The paper investigates the knowledge drivers of firms' eco-innovations (EI) by retaining the diverse nature of their target. Different internal and external knowledge sources are examined and the evidence of EI-modes is searched with respect to a sample of Spanish manufacturing firms covering the 2007-2009 and 2010-2012 periods. An "attenuated" Science, Technology, EI-mode prevails internally, with R&D more pivotal than either embodied or disembodied non-R&D knowledge, depending on the EI strategy. Externally, synthetic knowledge matters more than the analytical one, suggesting instead a Doing, Using, Interacting EI-mode. Hence, a dichotomic combination of the two modes emerges across the firm's boundaries. However, remarkable differences are in place, depending on whether EIs target efficiency or non-efficiency related environmental improvements. Our evidence also shows that internal and external knowledge turn out difficult to combine, both within and across modes.JEL: Q55; O31; O32.

The relationship between financing constraints, investments in research and development (R&D) and innovative performances has recently attracted renewed attention in the aftermath of a financial crisis that has led to problems of access to the credit on which innovation activities crucially rely. In spite of past developments in the theoretical analysis and in the data and methodologies for empirical investigation, some issues have remained unexplored to date. In this introduction to the special issue, we examine the contribution of the papers it contains, which provide new conceptualisations and empirical evidence at the firm level for Europe. Most previous research results, which were mainly based on extending models of financing constraints and physical investments to R&D investments, are confirmed, while new insights about this relationship are uncovered, in terms of the structural characteristics of the constrained firms, of the industries in which they operate, of their innovative activities and of the innovation outcomes they achieve. ARTICLE HISTORY

The aim of this article is to analyze the subnational spread of COVID‐19 in Italy using an economic geography perspective. The striking spatial unevenness of COVID‐19 suggests that the infection has hit economic core locations harder, and this raises questions about whether, and how, the subnational geography of the disease is connected to the economic base of localities. We provide some first evidence consistent with the possibility that the local specialization in geographically concentrated economic activities acts as a vehicle of disease transmission. This could generate a core‐periphery pattern in the spatiality of COVID‐19, which might follow the lines of the local economic landscape and the tradability of its outputs.

This paper investigates the forces correlated with environmental innovations (EIs) introduced by firms in local production systems (LPS). The role of inter-firm network relationships, agglomeration economies and internationalization strategies is jointly analysed for a sample of 555 firms in the EmiliaRomagna (ER) region (North-East Italy). Cooperating with a certain kind of local actors-i.e. suppliers and universities-is the most important EI driver for the investigated firms, along with their training coverage and their adoption of information and communication technologies. The role of agglomeration economies is instead less clear-cut. They spur EIs only in the presence of established LPS, with idiosyncratic sector specialization, while conversely they act as EI barriers. Networking effects and agglomeration economies are instead found to strongly promote the adoption of EIs by multinational firms, thus highlighting the importance of local -global interactions. Interesting specifications for these results are found for particular kinds of EIs, in such fields as CO 2 abatement and ISO labelling, generally extending the analysis of EI drivers by joining local and international factors. In addition, the role of regulatory sector factors confirms the induced innovation hypothesis and provides a robustness check to our results.

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Green technologies and smart specialisation strategies: a European patent-based analysis of the intertwining of technological relatedness and Key-Enabling-Technologies.