Does International Climate Finance Produce Green Innovation? A Specification-Curve Analysis of 118 Developing Economies

International climate finance is widely presumed to accelerate green technological innovation in recipient economies, and recent studies report positive effects. This study examines whether that proposition survives systematic scrutiny. Using OECD ENV-TECH patent indicators and OECD DAC Rio Marker climate-mitigation commitments for 118 developing economies between 2004 and 2022, the analysis estimates 180 specifications based on two estimators, three treatment scalings, five denominator thresholds, alternative trend specifications, and sample restrictions. Although 90% of the estimates are positive and 34% reach conventional significance, significance is confined to two identifiable dependencies. Count-based (quasi-Poisson) models are dominated by China, which accounts for 78.7% of the sample’s inventions despite representing only 10.7% of the world total: all thirty count specifications are significant with China included, and none is significant once China and India are excluded. Fractional-response models on the green invention share are invariant to dropping large recipients but derive their significance entirely from country-years with fewer than four total inventions, where a single patent moves the outcome by tens of percentage points. Of the 48 specifications that both exclude China and impose a minimally informative denominator, none is significant; the median standardised effect is 0.03. The findings indicate no reliable evidence that bilateral climate-mitigation finance raises green innovation, and identify a structural weighting problem that plausibly explains positive results in smaller samples.