CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Ruzicska, György Attila |
|---|---|
| Title | A Voting Model of Environmental Legislation |
| Summary | I present a voting model to analyze motives towards overlegislation and underenforcement of environmental standards by democratic governments. Based on the framework developed by Selden and Terrones (1993), I build an electoral model with two types of politicians: an environmentalist whose preferences match the median voters' utility function, and an industrialist who derives utility only from a capital good. I show that in an equilibrium where proposed environmental policy reveals the incumbent's type, an environmentalist politician is willing to overlegislate only for a small set of parameter values. In an equilibrium where proposed policy does not convey information about the politician's type, an incumbent chooses overlegislatory policy depending on voters' equilibrium strategy. I also show that an industrialist politician underenforces standards following an election in all equilibrium specification, while an environmentalist politician either enforces or overenforces the socially optimal standards in the second period. Finally, when voters cannot observe the proposed green policy, an industrialist incumbent is reelected with higher probability which negatively affects social welfare. |
| Supervisor | Kőszegi, Botond |
| Department | Economics MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/ruzicska_gyorgy.pdf |
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