[PhD dissertation] Fair climate policies and technical change: essays on distributional impacts and social acceptability on the path to net zero

Abstract

PhD in Economics

Institution Université Paris-Saclay (CentraleSupélec, LGI) & CIRED
Title « Fair climate policies and technical change — essays on distributional impacts and social acceptability on the path to net zero»

Supervised by Pascal da Costa (Université Paris Saclay, CentraleSupélec), Frédéric Ghersi (CIRED, CNRS), and Mehdi Senouci (Université Paris Saclay, CentraleSupélec)

Defence committee
Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline, Paris School of Economics (reviewer),
Carolyn Fischer, World Bank and Vrije University (reviewer),
Claire Lelarge, Université Paris-Saclay (president),
Philippe Aghion, Collège de France & LSE,
Thomas Sterner, University of Gothenburg

Abstract Climate change mitigation policies will require investments and generate new costs for society. This dissertation examines how these costs will be distributed across the population — households and workers. I mix approaches and methodologies to give a comprehensive overview of the inequalities induced by climate policies. The first part focuses on households consumption. The first chapter studies the carbon tax and the backfire effects of recycling its revenues to households. The second chapter assesses the distributional impact of a package of climate policies in France up to 2035. The second part studies employment and wages through technical change. The third chapter proposes a theoretical model to differentiate the directions of technical change and their determinants. The fourth chapter is a case-study of a low-carbon technology.