Publications

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Journal Articles


Spatial–temporal dynamics of structural unemployment in declining coal mining regions and potentialities of the ‘just transition’

Published in Energy Policy, 2024

A rapid decarbonisation of the United States economy is expected to disproportionately impact regions historically embedded in domestic fossil fuel production. For decades, social scientists have documented the economic and human toll of deindustrialisation, foreshadowing the transitional risks that these regions may face amidst decarbonisation. However, econometric studies evaluating the magnitude, duration, and spatial distribution of unemployment impacts in declining mining regions remain scarce, despite their pertinence to policymaking. Therefore, using econometric estimation methods that control for unobserved heterogeneity via two-way fixed effects, spatial effects, heterogeneous time trends, and grouped fixed effects for a panel of 3,072 US counties covering 2002–2019, we demonstrate that coal mine closures induce a contemporaneous rise in county unemployment rate with spatial ripple effects. Furthermore, evidence of local-level resilience to such shocks over a two-year time horizon is weak. To further account for county-level heterogeneity, we construct a typology of coal counties based on qualities theorised to be resilient to industrial decline. Our findings suggest the significant potential of investing in alternative sectors in localities with promising levels of economic diversity, retraining job seekers, providing relocation support in rural areas, and subsidising childcare in places with low female labour force participation.

Recommended citation: Mark E., Rafaty R, Schwarz M. (2024). "Spatial–temporal dynamics of structural unemployment in declining coal mining regions and potentialities of the ‘just transition." Energy Policy. 195.
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Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades

Published in Science, 2024

Meeting the Paris Agreement’s climate targets necessitates better knowledge about which climate policies work in reducing emissions at the necessary scale. We provide a global, systematic ex post evaluation to identify policy combinations that have led to large emission reductions out of 1500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 across 41 countries from six continents. Our approach integrates a comprehensive climate policy database with a machine learning–based extension of the common difference-in-differences approach. We identified 63 successful policy interventions with total emission reductions between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion metric tonnes CO2. Our insights on effective but rarely studied policy combinations highlight the important role of price-based instruments in well-designed policy mixes and the policy efforts necessary for closing the emissions gap.

Recommended citation: Stechemesser A., Koch N., Mark E., Dilger E., Klösel P., Menicacci L., Nachtigall D., Pretis F., Ritter N., Schwarz M., Vossen H., Wenzel A. (2024). "Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades." Science. 385(884-892).
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