Leo Wangler

The political economy of international environmental agreements: a survey

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of the formation of international environmental agreements. The survey covers theoretical modelling approaches and empirical studies including experimental work. Central to our survey is the question how the political process impacts different stages of agreement formation and stability. We distinguish the rules defined during pre-negotiations that govern negotiations, ratification and implementation. Strategic delegation and lobbying are directly relevant during the negotiation and ratification phases. Implementation, the choice of policy instruments at the national level, will also be impacted by lobbying and indirectly influence negotiations. We find that the basic theoretical framework for the analysis of international environmental agreements is largely unrelated to empirical approaches. Furthermore, we observe that models of the political process of agreement formation, like for example sequential game models, are yet to be developed.

Renewables and innovation: did policy induced structural change in the energy sector effect innovation in green technologies?

This study analyses the structural change in the energy system. By focusing on different green technology industries in Germany, it is of particular interest how policy-induced demand stimulates innovation. Taking the market size as well as the change in the market size as a proxy for increasing demand and patent counts as a proxy for innovation, there is support that the presence of institutions enabling diffusion of green technologies (GTs) is correlated with innovative activity. However, when the different GTs are treated separately remarkable differences can be observed. We also investigate the role of public expenditures for research and development. It is controlled for a structural break by comparing the two institutional settings incorporated into the legal system in Germany, namely the Electricity Feed Law and the Renewable Energy Sources Act. We find evidence for the role of public expenditures for research and development, and no evidence is found for the structural break.

Strategic Trade Policy as Response to Climate Change

This paper discusses the political economy of climate protection. The objective is to come to a better understanding of why climate change has become one of the main topics at the domestic agenda in some countries, despite the fact that climate change can theoretically be considered as a topic which would need international policy coordination. Using a strategic trade policy framework, the paper theoretically describes the incentives for domestic policymakers to advocate an ambitious climate policy.

International climate policy: does it matter? An empirical assessment

This paper is about the impact of international climate policy on greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction. We focus on the time before the official GHG emission reduction phase according to Kyoto (before 2008) and the hard and soft law elements of the agreement. We find that expectations on future GHG emission reduction had significant impacts on climate policies by studying the relationship between GHG emission reduction and stages of the Kyoto Protocol process (signing, ratification, entry into force). This observation applies to Annex I and non-Annex I countries. Moreover, approaching ratification, the initially observed difference between both country groups becomes less significant.