Results

CEP discussion paper

Shock therapy for clean innovation: Within-firm reallocation of R&D investments

We analyze how a major negative shock to the producers of fossil fuels may lead to a shift from dirty to clean R&D along the supply chain. First, we develop a theoretical framework of directed technical change, showing t...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The EU has a transformative mechanism to reduce carbon leakage, but challenges loom ahead

When companies face steep carbon prices in a country, they often move production to places with lower or no pricing. To address this problem, the European Union created the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. But, for de...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Voluntary carbon markets are helpful but far from perfect

Voluntary carbon markets are an important tool in the fight against climate change, but several issues make them less effective. Carbon offsets often overstate emissions reductions, and firms use these as a cheaper alter...Read more...

CentrePiece article

in brief... Designing carbon markets that deliver change

Ever since the European Union created its market-based carbon policy, governments and businesses have been keen to assess its impact. Jonathan Colmer, Ralf Martin, Mirabelle Muûls and Ulrich Wagner explain why analysing ...Read more...

Blog

LSE EUROPP:

How China's rise has shaped innovation and exit among Europe's solar firms

Should the EU protect European firms by restricting imports of solar technology from China? Drawing on new research, Pia Andres finds that Chinese competition has resulted in many European firms going out of business, bu...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists,:

Management Practices and Climate Policy in China

We investigate how management quality moderates the impact of carbon pricing on Chinese firms. Based on interviews with managers and lead engineers at manufacturing firms in Hubei and Beijing, we construct a novel index ...Read more...

Blog

Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment:

Harnessing the UK's strengths for green growth

Esin Serin and Pia Andres set out evidence on the UK's sectoral and technological strengths to assist policymakers as they consider how to allocate support across the economy in a way that maximises green growth opportun...Read more...

Blog

Imperial College Business School:

Do carbon markets work?

Ever since the EU created its market-based carbon policy, governments and businesses have been keen to see an impact. But analysing how effective policies can be on a noisy economic and global stage is complex - and hard...Read more...

Journal article

CESifo Forum:

“Big Push” Green Industrial Policy

Economists have been actively engaged with the question of climate policy for at least 30 years (Nordhaus 1991). The main product of this engagement has been vocal and wholehearted support of carbon pricing according to ...Read more...

Chapter

Firms and finance during the green transition

in Scaling up sustainable finance and investment in the global south

Creating economically and politically legitimate solutions to tackle climate change is one of the most pressing and challenging issues of our time. For emerging and developing economies, the task is made more difficult d...Read more...

Journal article

Ecological Economics:

The environmental cost of the international job market for economists

We provide an estimate of the environmental impact of the recruitment system in the economics profession, known as the "international job market for economists". Each year, most graduating PhDs seeking jobs in academia, ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Environmental costs of the global job market for economists

Each year, the international job market for economists involves more than 1,000 candidates and several hundred recruiters from around the world meeting for short pre-screening interviews at annual congresses in Europe an...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managerial and financial barriers during the green transition

Using data on 10,769 firms across 22 emerging markets, we show that both credit constraints and weak green management hold back corporate investment in green technologies embodied in new machinery, equipment and vehicles...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management:

Searching for carbon leaks in multinational companies

Does a unilateral climate change policy cause companies to shift the location of production, thereby creating carbon leakage? In this paper, we analyze the effect of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) o...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The environmental burden of the international job market for economists

Each year, the 'international job market for economists' involves over 1,000 junior candidates and several hundred recruiters from all over the world meeting for short pre-screening interviews at annual congresses in Eur...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The environmental cost of the international job market for economists

We provide an estimate of the environmental impact of the recruitment system in the economics profession, known as the "international job market for economists". Each year, most graduating PhDs seeking jobs in academia, ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do carbon offsets offset carbon?

We develop and implement a new method for identifying wasted subsidies and use it to provide systematic evidence of the misallocation of carbon offsets in the Clean Development Mechanism - the world's largest carbon offs...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

The Net Zero Strategy provides a foundation which now needs to be cemented in investment, tax, and regulatory decisions

The UK government has delivered on its promise to publish a strategy for driving the country's economy towards net zero emissions by 2050. Esin Serin and Anna Valero write that the economy-wide Net Zero Strategy provides...Read more...

CEP report

Seizing sustainable growth opportunities from carbon capture, usage and storage in the UK

Seizing opportunities from the CCUS value chain can be part of an economy-wide, net-zero-aligned growth path in the UK. The UK has responded to the climate emergency facing the world with an economy-wide target to reach...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Jobs for a strong and sustainable recovery from Covid-19

The UK's future economic, social and environmental prosperity will be shaped by how it deals with, and recovers from, the impact of Covid-19. This paper sets out coordinated net-zero-aligned investments which the UK can ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Generalized linear competition: from pass-through to policy

Economic policy and shifts in input market prices often have significant effects on the marginal costs of firms and can prompt strategic responses that make their impact hard to predict. We introduce "generalized linear ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Climate change policy: the case for a Covid-19 carbon tax

Ralf Martin and John Van Reenen explain how taxing emissions could help to meet the costs of the crisis and encourage investment in clean innovation....Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Strategy, investment and policy for a strong and sustainable recovery: an action plan

The UK and the world have suffered disruption and hardship from the COVID-19 pandemic on an immense scale. Together with the tragic consequences of the health crisis, there is now a real risk of protracted global depress...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Energy and climate change

UK greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are declining and have been declining for some time. As of 2018, the UK emitted 449 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e). That corresponds to a reduction of 43% relative to 1990 lev...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Searching for carbon leaks in multinational companies

Does unilateral climate change policy cause companies to shift the location of production, thereby creating carbon leakage? In this paper, we analyse the effect of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on ...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Brexit as Climate Policy: The Agenda on Energy and the Environment

The Great Recession and a sluggish economic recovery were instrumental in meeting the legally binding climate change targets that the UK has set for itself. But without more drastic policy interventions, it is unlikely t...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Environmental policy and directed technological change: Evidence from the european carbon market

This paper investigates the impact of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on technological change, exploiting installations level inclusion criteria to estimate the System's causal impact on firms' paten...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Environmental Economics and Policy:

The impact of the European Union emissions trading scheme on regulated firms: What is the evidence after ten years?

This article reviews the recent literature on ex post evaluation of the impacts of the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) on regulated firms in the industrial and power sectors. We summarize the findings ...Read more...

Journal article

Energy Economics:

Asymmetric industrial energy prices and international trade

This paper measures the response of bilateral trade flows to differences in industrial energy prices across countries. Using a rich panel dataset with 42 countries, 62 manufacturing sectors over 16 years (1996-2011) and ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Asymmetric industrial energy prices and international trade

This paper measures the response of bilateral trade flows to differences in industrial energy prices across countries. Using a panel for the period 1996-2011 including 42 countries, 62 sectors and covering 60% of global ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing: Evidence from microdata

We estimate the impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing plants using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of outcomes between plants subject to the full tax and p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Industry Compensation Under Relocation Risk: A Firm-Level Analysis of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme

When industry compensation is offered to prevent relocation of regulated firms, efficiency requires that payments be distributed across firms so as to equalize marginal relocation probabilities, weighted by the damage ca...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The polluter-doesn't-pay principle

By granting discounts on environmental taxes to heavy polluting firms, the government is missing out on significant tax revenues and achieving considerably less in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That is the central c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Environmental Policy and Directed Technological Change: Evidence from the European Carbon Market

This paper investigates the impact of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) on technological change. We exploit installations-level inclusion criteria to estimate the impact of the EU ETS on firms patenting. We find t...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Europe's emissions trading scheme: taxpayers versus sthe industry lobby

The European Commission plans to tighten the greenhouse gas emissions targets in the Emissions Trading System. Ralf Martin and colleagues examine the likely impact on affected businesses, and conclude that industry is ex...Read more...

CEP policy analysis

Still time to reclaim the European Union Emissions Trading System for the European tax payer

The criteria proposed by the EU Commission to identify industries that will receive free emission permits in the third phase of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) are not restrictive enough. Evidence fr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impacts of the Climate Change Levy on business: Evidence from Microdata

We estimate the impacts of the Climate Change Levy (CCL) on manufacturing plants using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of outcomes between plants subject to ...Read more...