Institutional Design of Climate Change Regulations

• In Event: Institutions and Climate Change

Abstract

Successful mitigation of climate change requires cooperation across multiple sectors and countries with diverse economic and political conditions. This paper asks why some countries have comprehensive climate change regulations while others limit regulations to only the energy sector. We argue that a country’s economic structure is an important factor shaping the design of climate policy. We create a novel dataset via text analysis of more than 1,000 climate policy documents from 60 countries spanning 2000-2018 and combine it with rich macro-data on countries’ political, economic, and ecological characteristics. Using a within-country design, we find that a country’s economic structure affects both scope and depth of climate change policies across countries. Our analysis sheds light on the interest groups that shape climate change policy design and how they facilitate or push back progress in reaching net zero emission goals.

Author

• Clara Park, Duke University