Studies of the impact of innovation and other climate-change policies

Topic lead: Antoine Dechezlepretre

This research topic assesses empirically a number of policy interventions designed to promote the transition to green growth in different settings, including policies to promote innovation, green investment, carbon emission reduction and greater resilience to climate change.

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What can we learn from the ‘natural experiments’ with climate change policies in different countries? What types of policy instrument have worked best, bearing in mind the multiple objectives of governments? Has the pace of direction of growth been affected?

Since around 1990, several countries have introduced policies explicitly designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and related pollution and to promote greater resource efficiency. Other policies have also affected the environment. Yet the empirical assessment of climate-related policies has lagged behind the policy innovations. How closely have they approached the first- or second-best instruments suggested by economic theory?

In other fields, such as development economics, it has become customary to employ sophisticated microeconomic techniques, such as matching and randomisation, to investigate the impact of policy.

In this research topic, we apply these modern evaluation techniques to the field of climate policy. Rigorous microeconometric analysis are used, where possible using techniques drawing on ‘natural experiments.’