This paper provides ex-post empirical evidence on the effects of green technology support policies, in comparison with other climate policies, on carbon dioxide emissions at the aggregate national level. The paper uses cross-country dynamic panel estimation for a sample of 38 countries over the...

Subsidies to renewable energy are costly and contentious. We estimate the reduction in prices that follows from the subsidized entry of wind power in the Nordic electricity market. A relatively small-scale entry of renewables leads to a large-scale transfer of surplus from the incumbent...

The transition to net zero carbon emissions necessary to limit global warming importantly involves greater use of renewable energies, especially solar energy, and scaling up renewable energy storage and generation. This paper discusses expanding the use of molten salt for renewable energy...

Support from local citizens is important for the scale-up of renewable energy. We investigate the impact of utility-scale wind and solar parks on employment, GDP and public finances in Brazilian municipalities using a difference-in-differences design with matching. We find a positive employment...

A growing literature points to the effectiveness of leveraging social interactions and nudges to spur adoption of pro-social behaviors. This study investigates a large-scale behavioral intervention designed to actively leverage social learning and peer interactions to encourage adoption of...

We study the spatial misallocation resulting from subsidies for residential solar panels in the US and quantify the associated environmental costs. We build a structural model of solar panel demand and electricity production across the country and estimate the model by combining 1) remotely...

I test whether economic incentives dampen peer effects in public-good settings. I study how a visible and subsidized contribution to a public good (installing solar panels) affects peer contributions that are neither subsidized nor visible (electing green power). Exploiting spatial variation in...

We examine how Green governments influence macroeconomic, education, and environmental outcomes. Our empirical strategy exploits that the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan gave rise to an unanticipated change in government in the German state Baden-Wuerttemberg in 2011. The incumbent rightwing...

Despite ambitious climate goals and already substantial stocks of developed fossil energy reserves, development of new fossil energy reserves continues to be high. This raises concerns, as it reinforces the fossil industry’s opportunities and incentives to continue extraction, and may...

We investigate how irreversibility in "dirty" and "clean" capital stocks affects optimal climate policy, from both theoretical and numerical perspectives. An increasing carbon tax will reduce investments in assets that pollute, and so reduce emissions in the short term: our "irreversibility...