IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aen/journl/2009se-climate-change-a02.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Does Climate Policy Affect Technical Change? An Analysis of the Direction and Pace of Technical Progress in a Climate-Economy Model

Author

Listed:
  • Carlo Carraro, Emanuele Massetti, Lea Nicita

Abstract

This paper analyses whether and how a climate policy designed to stabilize greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is likely to change the direction and pace of technical progress. The analysis is performed using an upgraded version of WITCH, a dynamic integrated regional model of the world economy. In this version, a non-energy R&D Sector, which enhances the productivity of the capital-labor aggregate, has been added to the energy R&D sector included in the original WITCH model. We find that, as a consequence of climate policy, R&D is re-directed towards energy knowledge. Nonetheless, total R&D investments decrease, due to a more than proportional contraction of non-energy R&D. Indeed, when non-energy and energy inputs are weakly substitutable, the overall contraction of the economic activity associated with a climate policy induces a decline in total R&D investments. However, enhanced investments in energy R&D and in the energy sector are found not to “crowd-out” investments in non-energy R&D.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Carlo Carraro, Emanuele Massetti, Lea Nicita, 2009. "How Does Climate Policy Affect Technical Change? An Analysis of the Direction and Pace of Technical Progress in a Climate-Economy Model," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Special I).
    • Handle: RePEc:aen:journl:2009se-climate-change-a02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=2346
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alan Manne & Richard Richels, 1992. "Buying Greenhouse Insurance: The Economic Costs of CO2 Emission Limits," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026213280x, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bosetti, Valentina & Carraro, Carlo & Duval, Romain & Tavoni, Massimo, 2011. "What should we expect from innovation? A model-based assessment of the environmental and mitigation cost implications of climate-related R&D," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1313-1320.
    2. Carraro, Carlo & De Cian, Enrica & Tavoni, Massimo, 2012. "Human Capital, Innovation, and Climate Policy: An Integrated Assessment," Climate Change and Sustainable Development 122861, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    3. Carlo Carraro & Enrica De Cian & Lea Nicita, 2009. "Modeling Biased Technical Change. Implications For Climate Policy," Working Papers 2009_27, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    4. Hübler, Michael & Baumstark, Lavinia & Leimbach, Marian & Edenhofer, Ottmar & Bauer, Nico, 2012. "An integrated assessment model with endogenous growth," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 118-131.
    5. Emanuele Massetti & Lea Nicita, 2010. "The Optimal Climate Policy Portfolio when Knowledge Spills across Sectors," CESifo Working Paper Series 2988, CESifo.
    6. Carlo Carraro & Enrica De Cian & Massimo Tavoni, 2009. "Human Capital Formation and Global Warming Mitigation: Evidence from an Integrated Assessment Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 2874, CESifo.
    7. Bretschger, Lucas & Lechthaler, Filippo & Rausch, Sebastian & Zhang, Lin, 2017. "Knowledge diffusion, endogenous growth, and the costs of global climate policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 47-72.
    8. Everett, Tim & Ishwaran, Mallika & Ansaloni, Gian Paolo & Rubin, Alex, 2010. "Economic growth and the environment," MPRA Paper 23585, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Enrica De Cian, 2009. "Factor-Augmenting Technical Change: An Empirical Assessment," Working Papers 2009.18, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    10. Joshua S. Gans, 2012. "Innovation and Climate Change Policy," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 125-145, November.
    11. Zha, Donglan & Kavuri, Anil Savio & Si, Songjian, 2017. "Energy biased technology change: Focused on Chinese energy-intensive industries," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 1081-1089.
    12. Orachos Napasintuwong Artachinda, 2011. "Modeling Directions of Technical Change in Agricultural Sector," Working Papers 201101, Kasetsart University, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    13. Carraro, Carlo & De Cian, Enrica & Nicita, Lea & Massetti, Emanuele & Verdolini, Elena, 2010. "Environmental Policy and Technical Change: A Survey," International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, now publishers, vol. 4(2), pages 163-219, October.
    14. David Hémous & Morten Olsen, 2021. "Directed Technical Change in Labor and Environmental Economics," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 13(1), pages 571-597, August.
    15. Yang, Bo & Liu, Baozhen & Peng, Jiachao & Liu, Xujun, 2022. "The impact of the embedded global value chain position on energy-biased technology progress: Evidence from chinas manufacturing," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    16. Stefania Lovo & Michael Gasiorek & Richard Tol, 2014. "Investment in second-hand capital goods and energy intensity," GRI Working Papers 163, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael Toman, 1998. "Research Frontiers in the Economics of Climate Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(3), pages 603-621, April.
    2. Marc Vielle & Alain L. Bernard, 1998. "Un exemple d'utilisation : le coût de politiques de réduction des gaz à effet de serre," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 136(5), pages 33-48.
    3. Oliver Bettis & Simon Dietz & Nick Silver, 2015. "The risk of climate ruin," GRI Working Papers 217, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    4. Chang, Charles W., 2014. "DICESC: Optimal Policy in a Stochastic Control Framework," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 170831, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Jennifer Morris & Vivek Srikrishnan & Mort Webster & John Reilly, 2018. "Hedging Strategies: Electricity Investment Decisions under Policy Uncertainty," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    6. Baker, Erin, 2005. "Uncertainty and learning in a strategic environment: global climate change," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 19-40, January.
    7. Rosendahl, Knut Einar, 2004. "Cost-effective environmental policy: implications of induced technological change," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 1099-1121, November.
    8. Terry Barker & Jonathan Köhler & Marcelo Villena, 2002. "Costs of greenhouse gas abatement: meta-analysis of post-SRES mitigation scenarios," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 5(2), pages 135-166, June.
    9. Rose, Steven K., 2014. "Integrated assessment modeling of climate change adaptation in forestry and pasture land use: A review," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 548-554.
    10. Thiele, R., 1996. "Zur ökonomischen Bewertung tropischer Regenwälder," Proceedings “Schriften der Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften des Landbaues e.V.”, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA), vol. 32.
    11. Warwick J. McKibbin & Peter J. Wilcoxen, 1999. "Permit Trading Under the Kyoto Protocol and Beyond," Economics and Environment Network Working Papers 9902, Australian National University, Economics and Environment Network.
    12. DeCarolis, Joseph & Daly, Hannah & Dodds, Paul & Keppo, Ilkka & Li, Francis & McDowall, Will & Pye, Steve & Strachan, Neil & Trutnevyte, Evelina & Usher, Will & Winning, Matthew & Yeh, Sonia & Zeyring, 2017. "Formalizing best practice for energy system optimization modelling," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 184-198.
    13. Julien Lefevre, 2018. "Modeling the Socioeconomic Impacts of the Adoption of a Carbon Pricing Instrument – Literature review," CIRED Working Papers hal-03128619, HAL.
    14. Roberto Roson & Francesco Bosello, 2007. "Estimating a Climate Change Damage Function through General Equilibrium Modeling," Working Papers 2007_08, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    15. Toth, Ferenc L, 1995. "Discounting in integrated assessments of climate change," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 23(4-5), pages 403-409.
    16. Manne, Alan & Mendelsohn, Robert & Richels, Richard, 1995. "MERGE : A model for evaluating regional and global effects of GHG reduction policies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 17-34, January.
    17. Fankhauser, Samuel & Kverndokk, Snorre, 1996. "The global warming game -- Simulations of a CO2-reduction agreement," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 83-102, March.
    18. Kypreos, Socrates, 2007. "A MERGE model with endogenous technological change and the cost of carbon stabilization," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 5327-5336, November.
    19. repec:dgr:uvatin:20020095 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Stephen P.A. Brown & Hillard G. Huntington, 1994. "LDC Cooperation in World Oil Conservation," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Special I), pages 310-328.
    21. Reyer Gerlagh & Bob van der Zwaan & Marjan Hofkes & Ger Klaassen, 2004. "Impacts of CO 2 -Taxes in an Economy with Niche Markets and Learning-by-Doing," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 28(3), pages 367-394, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F0 - International Economics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aen:journl:2009se-climate-change-a02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David Williams (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaeeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.