The Global Political Economy of a Green Transition

This Seminar is part of the Economics Seminar, Series Spring 2025.

This paper analyses the paths towards a transition to a low carbon economy through developing the first international political economy integrated assessment model. 

The model aims to bring together two insights which up to now have been analysed separately: 

(i) countries' climate actions have a (statistically) significant effect on the reduction of carbon emissions and (ii) countries' actions are heterogeneous and are influenced by other countries both due to peer pressure and by free riding which can become even more prevalent once climate actions become more effective. The model shows the possibility of a number of outcomes, where high levels of sustained global action is only one possibility. 

Our key result is that a high level of sustained global action is only achieved if there is a low degree of heterogeneity regarding countries' preferences for action and a strong peer pressure effect.

Speaker

• Giorgio Ricchiuti (University of Florence)

Header image credit: Zbynek Burival via Unsplash.