Climate policies and skill-biased employment dynamics: Evidence from EU countries

Giovanni Marin and Francesco Vona

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2019, vol. 98, issue C

Abstract: The political acceptability of climate policies is undermined by job-killing arguments, especially for the least-skilled workers. However, evidence of the distributional impacts for different workers remains scant. We examine the associations between climate policies, proxied by energy prices, and workforce skills for 14 European countries and 15 industrial sectors over the period 1995–2011. Using a shift-share instrumental variable estimator and controlling for the influence of automation and globalization, we find that climate policies have been skill biased against manual workers and have favoured technicians. The long-term change in energy prices accounted for between 9.2% and 17.5% (resp. 4.2% and 8.0%) of the increase (resp. decrease) in the share of technicians (resp. manual workers).

Keywords: Climate policies; Workforce skills; Employment impacts; Cluster analysis; Energy prices; Shift-share instruments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 Q52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (57)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Climate policies and skill-biased employment dynamics: evidence from EU countries (2019)
Working Paper: Climate policies and skill-biased employment dynamics: evidence from EU countries (2019)
Working Paper: Climate policies and skill-biased employment dynamics: evidence from EU countries (2018)
Working Paper: Climate policies and Skill-biased employment dynamics: evidence from EU countries (2018)
Working Paper: Climate policies and Skill-biased employment dynamics: evidence from EU countries (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:98:y:2019:i:c:s0095069618304911

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2019.102253

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