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

Giovanni Di Bartolomeo (), Enrico Saltari and Willi Semmler

No 230, Working Papers in Public Economics from Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Roma

Abstract: We study the dynamic problem of pollution control enacted by some policies of regulation and mitigation. The transition dynamics from one level of regulation and mitigation to another usually involve 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 policymakers solve an inter-temporal de-cision problem with a finite horizon that involves the repetitive solution of an optimal control problem at each sampling instant in a receding horizon fashion. We find that political short-termism substantially affects the transition dynam-ics. It leads to quicker but costlier transitions. It also leads to an under-evaluation of the environmental costs that may accelerate climate change.

Keywords: climate policy; global warming; non-linear model predictive control; short-termism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 P28 Q54 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12
Date: 2022-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.dipecodir.it/wpsap/data/wp230.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 (2019)
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:sap:wpaper:wp230

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Public Economics from Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Roma
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Luisa Giuriato ().