Performative State Capacity and Climate (In)Action

Immanuel Feld and Thiemo Fetzer
Additional contact information
Immanuel Feld: University of Warwick

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: Climate action requires significant public- and private sector investment to achieve meaningful reductions in carbon emissions. This paper documents that large-scale austerity, coupled with barriers to flows of data and a lack of (digital) skills in (local) government, may have been a significant barrier to delivering climate action in the form of retrofitting. Decomposing heterogeneity in estimated treatment effects of a large-scale energy efficiency savings program that was rolled out through a regression discontinuity design in the early 2010s, we find that both the extent of austerity-induced local budget cuts and poor digital connectivity – may be responsible for up to 30% fewer retrofit installations that counterfactually would have taken place had it not been for austerity

Keywords: state capacity; austerity; skills; climate action; public economics JEL Classification: Q54; Q58; H76; C21; O33; R11; H54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-inv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... tions/wp708.2024.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Performative State Capacity and Climate (In)Action (2024)
Working Paper: Performative State Capacity and Climate (In)Action (2024)
Working Paper: Performative State Capacity and Climate (In)Action (2024)
Working Paper: Performative State Capacity and Climate (In) Action (2024)
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:cge:wacage:708

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jane Snape ().