Lab News

Journal article

In this article, we show that central banks vary substantially in the extent to which they re-risk fossil fuel investments and physical risks and de-risk clean energy investments. Our analysis finds that central bank climate risk management is not associated with a country’s economic exposure to transition risks, but instead with its climate politics.

Journal article

Why are some governments more effective in promoting economic change than others? We develop a theory of the institutional sources of economic transformation. Institutions can facilitate transformation through two central mechanisms: insulation and compensation.

Comment

Countries vary in the adoption of sticks and carrots in climate policy. Differences in institutional capacity and fiscal space shape national policies. This matters for the effectiveness of national mitigation efforts and the extent of international conflict over climate policy.

Journal article

California and Germany share ambitious emission reduction targets. Yet California is ahead of Germany in electrifying transportation by several metrics, including the number of public charging stations. We show that variation in the politics of coordination in California and Germany explains the different outcomes.

Journal article

Firms often oppose costly public policy reforms—but under what conditions may they come to support such reforms? Here, we advance a dynamic theory of change in business policy positions that explains how business may shift from opposing to supporting new regulation over the course of multiple rounds of policymaking.

Journal article

A gap persists between the emissions reductions pledged by countries under the Paris Agreement and those resulting from their domestic policies. We argue that this gap in fact contains two parts: one in the policies that countries adopt, and the other in the outcomes that those policies achieve.

Journal article

Policy change often involves multiple policy subsystems, as in the case of clean energy transitions. The article advances our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning trans-subsystem policy change, offering a model of the politics of tipping points.

Journal article

Organized business interests often seek to block public interest regulations. But whether firms oppose regulation depends on institutional context. We argue that, in federal systems, sub-national policies and politics can have a home state effect on firms’ national policy preferences and the lobbying coalitions they join. 

Journal article

Many of the barriers to progress in addressing environmental problems, such as climate change, are political. This Review illustrates how insight into politics can help policymakers craft strategies to address the ambition gap, the implementation gap and the international action gap.

Journal article

National climate institutions structure could greatly impact the process of policy design and implementation. This Analysis identifies four models of climate governance for major emitters, estimates their policy ambitions and performance, then shows how they are related to macro features.