The Climate Transition passes any cost-benefit test at the aggregate level. However, costs and benefits are unevenly distributed, and implementation requires continuous popular buy-in. Furthermore, policy decisions are made through the political process, and this process itself can impede certain policy. This project involves summarising models of political choice (e.g. the median voter, probabilistic voting, citizen candidate, etc models) with a view to characterising frictions to implementing effective climate policy. This approach will be applied to specific policy challenges. For example, consider household decarbonisation: this is expensive, with large upfront costs, but with ongoing cost savings once investments have been made. The liability to make these investments is tied to ownership of expensive assets (residential property). Other issues include the lack of access to credit for poorer sections of society; the existence of social landlords who can alleviate credit constraints for poorer households; the enhanced credit access individuals have when mortgaging property; and the trade-off between public expenditure crowding-in investment from wealthy individuals, against any political backlash that may come from subsidising the already wealthy. What should policy be ideally? And what should policy be when we take in to account the constraints that come from the political process?

Further information

The successful applicant will join the Energy and Environment research cluster in the Department of Economics in Strathclyde Business School, and will be part of a growing number of PhD students working on the transition to net zero. This project forms part of a collaborative relationship with the Institute of Economics within the Department of Business Science at Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, which is an International Strategic Partner of the University of Strathclyde. There will be an opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from TU Braunschweig, as well as spend some time there.