With reference to the existing literature, this paper investigates the heterogenous effect on the attainment of circular economy by government policies in the form of government stringency and government financial support, environmentally related innovations, and human capital. The study was carried out in 26 countries of the OECD from 2010–2019 using the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) model and data from Eurostat and OECD datasets. Indicators for the independent variables were non-market-based stringency, market-based subsidy, gross domestic expenditure on R&D by source of funds, R&D expenditure intramural, national expenditure on environmental protection environmental protection, environmentally related patents with co-inventors, and employees involved in education and training. The results revealed that a significant effect of government stringency in the form of non-market-based stringency, environmental innovation, government financing on R&D, and national expenditure on environmental protection have significant impact on the attainment of circular economy within OECD countries. Surprisingly, there was no significant effect of the market-based subsidy on domestic material consumption (dmc). We conclude that a blend of government policies is the effective means of achieving a circular economy.

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The prominence of the knowledge economy technological innovation and economic development globally cannot be questioned. However, not all firms especially from Central and Eastern European to tap into the benefits coupled with new knowledge for improvement in firm innovation performance. Mostly, this is due to environmental factors confronting the firms. This study focused on the impact of External Knowledge (EK), R&D expenditure and ICT usage on firm innovation performance with the moderation role of informal competition. We used Resource Dependency Theory and Contingency theory as the theoretical background. A cross sectional data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) 2019 on 3105 firms from CEE regions namely Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland was analysed using logistic regression. These countries were selected because firms face elevated level of informal competition in the business environment. The study confirmed the hypotheses that, internal R&D, external knowledge and website availability and usage have positive and significant direct effect on technological innovation. Our study contributes to the literature of R&D and firm performance by highlighting the moderating effect of business environment (informal competition).