Climate Change Policies and Control of Corruption: A Cross-National Analysis of CO2 Emissions

Abstract

Abstract Given current climate change issues, scholars have recently focused on how different adaptation and mitigation policies may be effective at improving the environment. On the one hand, researchers argue that climate change policies will help reduce environmental problems like CO2 emissions due to their focus on green energy and markets. On the other hand, many argue that these policies are too small in scope, reformist, and do not address the underlying issues driving climate change. However, little is known about how climate change policies as a whole are impacting CO2 emissions cross-nationally. To address this research gap, the authors use two-way fixed effects regression analysis to test how climate change policies impact CO2 emissions per capita across 159 nations from 1996 to 2018. Most importantly, this analysis considers how factors like governance, specifically a nation’s control of corruption, moderates the impact of climate change policies on CO2 emissions.