Jan 16, 2018; Colloquium
Colloquium - The Political Economy of Climate Policy
Abstract: We analyze climate policy in the context of a potential catastrophe using a simple electoral competition framework. Two parties with both office and policy motivation compete for office by announcing their climate policy, after receiving private signals about the state of the world. We identify an equilibrium in which both parties truthfully reveal their private information to the voters and the implemented policy is (almost) first-best for all possible realizations of parties’ signals. In this asymmetric equilibrium one party adopts extreme platforms, while the other party adopts moderate ones. The equilibrium exists if the moderate party is sufficiently policy-motivated.