Does an early start help or hurt? Statehood, institutions and modern climate change policies

James Ang and Per Fredriksson

Energy Economics, 2021, vol. 94, issue C

Abstract: This paper first hypothesizes that countries that have accumulated more statehood experience over the last two millennia tend to have more stringent climate change policies. A second hypothesis is that there are also indirect effects via the rule of law, democracy, corruption, political instability, regulatory quality, and government effectiveness. Our empirical evidence provides support for these hypotheses. An early start helps both directly and indirectly. The strongest indirect effects occur through government effectiveness, rule of law, and corruption. Climate change policy analysis may take these findings into account and incorporate state capacity building and bureaucratic and legal reforms into the design of international environmental agreements. However, the effects are unlikely to arrive quickly.

Keywords: Climate change policy; Environment; State antiquity; State capacity; Institutions; Government effectiveness; Rule of law; Corruption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K23 O44 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988320304151
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:eneeco:v:94:y:2021:i:c:s0140988320304151

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2020.105075

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

More articles in Energy Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().