The effects of political short-termism on transitions induced by pollution regulations

Giovanni Di Bartolomeo (), Enrico Saltari and Willi Semmler

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: We study the dynamic problem of pollution control enacted by some policy of regulation and mitigation. The dynamics of the transition from one level of regulation and mitigation to another usually in-volves inter-temporal trade-offs. We focus on how different policymaker’s time horizons affect these trade-offs. We refer to shorter lengths in policymaker’s time horizons as political short-termism or inat-tention, which is associated with political economy or information constraints. Formally, inattention is modeled by using Nonlinear Model Predictive Control. Therefore, it is a dynamic concept: our policy-makers solve an inter-temporal decision problem with finite horizon that involves the repetitive solu-tion of an optimal control problem at each sampling instant in a receding horizon fashion. We find that political short-termism substantially affects the transition dynamics. It leads to quicker, but costlier, transitions. It also leads to an under-evaluation of the environmental costs that may accelerate climate change.

Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/200143/1/pollution_revised_wp.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The effects of political short-termism on transitions induced by pollution regulations (2022)
Working Paper: The effects of political short-termism on transitions induced by pollution regulations (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:200143

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().