Conference Agenda

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiatives are designed to play a role in mitigating climate change. Yet, the global assessment of their effectiveness has not been disaggregated to identify where and when REDD+ has been effective. Most analyses of the impact of REDD+ initiatives focus on its efficiency in reducing deforestation, but they don’t consider the impact on illegal land use practices. This study examines the effectiveness of REDD+ projects in collective lands of Afro-Colombian communities to avoid deforestation and to control the spread of illegal coca crops. Although illicit coca crops are not the primary direct driver of deforestation in Colombia, by 2021, 20\% of these crops were located in the collective territories of Afro-Colombian communities in the Pacific. Their expansion into key environmental regions underscores their role in land use change.

This study seeks to understand whether the signing of collective REDD+ agreements by Afro-Colombian communities strengthens local monitoring systems, social cohesion, and improves economic conditions to curb deforestation and prevent illicit practices. Using satellite data and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that REDD+ projects significantly reduced deforestation by an average of 33 m² per pixel and coca cultivation by 0.33 ha/km², which translates into approximately 9,695 hectares of avoided deforestation and 7,098 hectares of contained coca crop expansion annually. These results underscore the potential of REDD+ to strengthen local monitoring systems and integrate conservation with anti-drug policies in vulnerable regions.

Carbon pricing policies, such as carbon taxes and emissions trading systems (ETS), aim to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions but may inadvertently hinder adaptation to climate change by increasing energy costs and disrupting employment. This creates a critical but underexplored dilemma between climate change mitigation and adaptation. Using global datasets on carbon pricing and mortality from 1991 to 2021, we estimate that carbon pricing policies on average leads to 54 additional deaths per 100,000 population annually. Importantly, the impacts are observed primarily for temperature-related mortality during extreme weather, which suggests that the policies affect mortality through their impact on adaptation capacity.

Two additional analyses provide further insights: one with a finer focus on the European Union ETS using weekly high-frequency mortality data, and the other with a broader scope by including indirect carbon pricing such as fuel taxes alongside direct pricing. While the overall benefits of carbon pricing—such as lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduced air pollution—outweigh its health costs by the factor of 1.1, this paper highlights the need to integrate adaptation strategies into climate policies to balance mitigation goals with equitable outcomes.

Environmental policies such as the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) raise concerns about their impact on employment and competitiveness. Yet, existing EU ETS studies focus on firm-level outcomes during the initial phases of the program. We construct a panel dataset of about 900 European provinces across 2008 to 2020 to assess the effects of a significant policy change in Phase 3 of the EU ETS. Specifically, we investigate how the changes in the allocation of free allowances affected local economies in terms of employment, gross value added (GVA) and productivity. By assembling a novel dataset and measuring the net change of paid emissions from Phase 2 to Phase 3 we construct a measure of exposure to the policy change at the NUTS-3 level. Using synthetic difference-in-differences, we find that being more exposed to the EU ETS is associated with a statistically significant contraction of employment and GVA in the more carbon-intensive industries. Our results are complemented by evidence on a sizeable reduction in carbon emissions and a mild impact in terms of regional disparities in the European Union.

This paper investigates the impact of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on regulated firms' investments into start-ups. The existing research primarily addresses the direct inventive responses of regulated firms, potentially overlooking spillover effects. We hypothesise that the EU ETS does not only affect regulated firms' innovation efforts but also impacts their investments in green start-ups. To test this, we employ a Difference-in-Differences identification strategy, leveraging the allocation of free allowances within the EU ETS and the transition from Phase 3 to Phase 4 in 2021, which was marked by a significant increase in carbon prices. Unlike most prior studies that focus on the system’s introduction, this analysis evaluates the marginal impact of price hikes on regulated firms exposed to the price shock compared to regulated firms with limited exposure to the price shock. We find that the price increase is associated with a 2.6 percentage point decrease in the share of regulated firms' investments in green start-ups representing a 74% decline relative to the pre-treatment level. This effect appears to be primarily driven by a reduction in early venture capital funding for green start-ups compared to non-green start-ups, with the impact particularly pronounced for Series A funding.

There is growing scepticism within the climate research community about whether green growth can be an effective strategy for protecting the environment while improving living standards. A recent survey of climate policy researchers found that over two-thirds held post-growth views and these were more prevalent among respondents from wealthier countries with lower levels of inequality. Building on these findings, we surveyed 19,328 citizens across 13 EU countries to examine public attitudes towards economic growth and their relationship with socio-demographic characteristics, political views, individual values, and climate policy preferences. While EU citizens were considerably more pro-growth than climate policy researchers, similar patterns emerged: growth scepticism was more prevalent in wealthier and more equal countries. At the individual level, pro-growth views were positively associated with being male, older, and politically right-leaning, as well as with trust in politicians and confidence in their climate action efforts. Notably, growth views showed little association with climate concern or support for climate policies. These findings suggest that public attitudes do not fit a simple trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection. Basic human values also had significant associations: self-direction and conservation values were positively associated with pro-growth views, but unexpectedly so were benevolence and equality. These findings highlight the need for a more nuanced understanding of public attitudes by exploring whether pro-growth opinions are primarily shaped by a belief in GDP growth as essential for human well-being or by techno-optimism about decoupling growth from environmental harm. 

This paper provides firm-level estimates of the marginal carbon abatement cost from 2003 to 2019, using administrative microdata on the entire German manufacturing sector. We compute the shadow price of reducing CO2 emissions for over 16,000 firms, including about 700 firms regulated under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). We describe the evolution of abatement costs across industries and over time, tracking the impact of changes in the policy design and its stringency on firms' behaviour. Our findings imply that marginal abatement costs stayed relatively constant after the EU ETS was introduced and did not show converge over time. We observe substantial heterogeneity within and across industries, and find that firms with low abatement costs reduced their emission intensity. These firms increased output without raising emissions, and we find evidence that they shifted to using greener fuels for their energy needs. However, these firms did not sell more allowances compared to those with higher abatement costs, suggesting that significant gains from trading allowances are still to be realized. These results provide valuable information for policymakers in the European Union and beyond on the actual level of the costs imposed by climate change policy, and its distributional impacts across firms and industries.