Green technological licensing strategies with fixed-fee among rival firms under emissions trading scheme

This paper considers no-licensing, unilateral licensing, and cross-licensing strategies among rival firms with different green technologies under emissions trading scheme. We mainly focus on the impact of green technological licensing strategies on firms’ operational management from a business perspective by considering different carbon quota allocations. It is shown that the green technological licensing strategy is always a preferred strategy in globally optimal sense when the technological gap and emission improvement are lower than some thresholds; if firms’ bargaining powers are within a certain range, the green technological licensing strategies can realize a Pareto improvement; the equilibrium decisions have a certain degree of robustness under random perturbation. To improve the performance of green technological licensing models, we introduce revenue-sharing contracts into the green technological licensing negotiation processes and show that, if the better-off firms agree to transfer a certain portion of their revenues, revenue-sharing contracts can increase the total profits of firms and are profitable for all parties. From an economic and environmental perspective, green technological licensing strategies can promote sustainable social development, while revenue-sharing contracts can significantly increase the incentive for rival firms to license green technologies.