Performative State Capacity and Climate (In)Action

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Abstract

Climate action requires significant public and private sector investments to achieve meaningful reductions in carbon emissions. This paper documents that austerity, coupled with a lack of (digital) skills in (local) government, may have been a significant barrier to delivering climate action in the form of retrofitting. Decomposing heterogeneity in estimated treatment effects of a large scale energy efficiency program rolled out through a regression discontinuity design in the early 2010s, we find that both the extent of local budget cuts and poor digital connectivity may be responsible for up to 30% fewer retrofit installations that counterfactually would have taken place.

Citation

Feld, I., & Fetzer, T. (2024). Performative state capacity and climate (in) action.

@article{feld2024performative,
  title={Performative state capacity and climate (in) action},
  author={Feld, Immanuel and Fetzer, Thiemo},
  year={2024},
  publisher={CESifo Working Paper}
}