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Título: How Does Climate Policy Affect Technical Change? An Analysis of the Direction and Pace of Technical Progress in a Climate-Economy Model
Autores: Carraro, Carlo
Massetti, Emanuele
Nicita, Lea
Fecha: 2009-05-27
2009-05-27
2009
Publicador: AgEcon
Fuente:
Tipo: Working or Discussion Paper
Tema: Technical Change
Climate Policy
Stabilization Cost
R&D Investments
Environmental Economics and Policy
C72
H23
Q25
Q28
Descripción: 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.
Idioma: en