Complex dimensions of climate policy: the role of political economy, capital markets, and urban form

This dissertation deals with the complex and multifaceted issue of climate change and climate policy. Since the problem touches upon many disciplines and also subfields within economics, the present study tries to bridge the gaps between different areas and dimensions of economic analysis. Chapter 1 provides the basis for Chapter 2. Chapter 2 examines the effects of climate policy via a carbon tax on the extraction behavior of a monopolistic exporter of an essential fossil resource like oil. An additional dimension is introduced by accounting for the endogenous interaction of the resource market and the capital market in a general equilibrium setting. By doing so, a new channel for the postponement of resource extraction is found and discussed. Chapter 3 examines climate policy in the transportation sector via fuel economy standards and fuel taxes in the framework of a monocentric city model. This opens up a new channel of these environmental policy measures on welfare through a long-run adjustment of the urban form. In Chapter 4, environmental-economic and the political-economic perspective are integrated in a multidimensional voting model. This opens up an own field of questions about how environmental policy interacts with redistributive policy and how income inequality affects the degree and the polarization of the resulting climate policy between the parties.