Does environment pay for politicians?

Mohamed Boly (), Jean-Louis Combes and Pascale Combes Motel ()
Additional contact information
Mohamed Boly: World Bank Group
Pascale Combes Motel: LEO - Laboratoire d'Économie d'Orleans [2022-...] - UO - Université d'Orléans - UT - Université de Tours - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne, UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Pascale Motel Combes ()

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We econometrically assess how elections affect environmental performance, namely climate policy, using a sample of 76 democratic countries from 1990 to 2014. Three key results emerge from our system-GMM estimations. First, CO2 emissions increase in election years, suggesting that incumbents engage in fiscal manipulation through the composition of public spending rather than its level. Second, the effect has weakened over recent years and is present only in established democracies. Third, higher freedom of the press and high income that can proxy high environmental preferences from citizens reduce the size of this trade-off between pork-barrel spending and the public good, namely environmental quality. Deteriorating environmental quality can bring electoral benefits to politicians.

Keywords: CO2 emissions; Electoral cycles; Environmental policy; Panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-inv, nep-pol and nep-res
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04209496v3
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Economic Modelling, 2023, pp.106491. ⟨10.1016/j.econmod.2023.106491⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-04209496v3/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does environment pay for politicians? (2023)
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:hal:journl:hal-04209496

DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2023.106491

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().