Non-resident and resident patents, renewable and fossil energy, pollution, and economic growth in the USA

The main objective of this paper is to estimate the impact of foreign research and development (R&D) spillovers on pollution and renewable energy consumption (RE). We choose as proxies for R&D and for foreign R&D spillovers, resident patents (RP) and non-resident patents (NRP), respectively. We use annual data for the USA spanning the period 1980–2016. We show the presence of a long-run relationship between NRP, RP, RE, fossil energy consumption (FE), net energy imports (NEI), gross domestic product (GDP), and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions. There are long-run unidirectional Granger causalities running from all considered variables to economic growth. There are short-run unidirectional causalities running from NEI to all considered variables except RP and GDP, from GDP to RP and RE, from FE to RE, and from carbon emissions to RE. By using the autoregressive distributed lag approach, several long-run elasticities are evaluated. In particular, RP increases carbon emissions, whereas NRP reduces it. Both RP and NRP have a positive impact on RE and GDP. RP and NRP seem to be complementary activities, and RE reduces NEI. Therefore, the US authorities should encourage the use of NRP because of their beneficial effect on pollution, home innovation, renewable energy consumption, and economic growth.