Prof. Dr. Aya Kachi, Manuel Ebner

International Political Economy and Energy Policy

Objectives
Resistance to carbon policies persists due to fears of negative economic impacts, particularly on job security. Hence, opposition groups often leverage the “policy-kills-jobs” narrative, which does not rest on a solid empirical foundation. The narrative is pervasive as it does not only resonate with workers, who genuinely believe that climate policies put their jobs at risk, but also with those that find a rational counter-argument masking their ideological opposition in the narrative. Leveraging insights from labor economics, public opinion, and political economy, we investigate how these two mechanisms contribute to policy resistance, and whether patterns diff er across countries with different levels of fossil fuel dependency and social welfare spending. Specifically, we ask whether job risk beliefs affect policy support, how individuals adjust their beliefs when presented with new risk information, and whether updated risk beliefs would lead to policy support adjustments. We also analyze the role of policy design—pairing carbon pricing with various worker compensation measures—in mitigating carbon policy resistance.
To assess the role of “job-killing” narrative and ideology behind policy resistance, we set the following empirical objectives. (1) Job risk estimation: We develop a new strategy to approximate low-carbon transition risk of workers, based on their job profi les. (2) Job risk beliefs vs. job profi le-based risk (perception gaps): We assess how well workers’ job risk beliefs match with the job profi le-based risk scores, examining diff erences between subjective statements and the benchmark. We identify ideological groups prone to job risk over-estimation. (3) Job risk information: We test whether the provision of information on job risk leads workers to update their risk beliefs and policy preferences, and whether this tendency varies across diff erent ideologies. (4) Policy packaging: We analyze whether the policy proposals’ attributes including diff ering compensation schemes for aff ected workers and its coverage are relevant for mitigating job risk beliefs and thus resistance to the policies. (5) Cross-national variation: We analyze whether the above relationships vary between countries, and if such diff erences correlate with the countries’ levels of fossil fuel dependency and social welfare spending.

Realised Steps
1. We developed an approximation for jobs’ transition risk based on job profiles.
2. Based on national labor market data of the four case countries—Including measures of sector carbon exposure, occupation adaptability to greening economies, and regional labor market frictions, we computed the transition risk associated with existing occupations. We use this data as an information treatment in the belief-updating experiment.
3. Using our own funds, we conducted and analyzed a pilot study in the UK, with online survey recruitment by Prolific (N=1429). This helped us refine the experiment design for the multi-country study. A working paper is completed.
4. We have implemented original survey experiments addressing our research questions. Data are being collected in that fi elds in four
countries that vary in fossil fuel dependency and in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.S. (approx.. N = 5700)—countries that diff er in their fossil fuel reliance and welfare spending generosity. A working paper is completed.
5. In the survey, additionally to the risk belief updating experiment, which we initially proposed, we were able to include a conjoint experiment. It allows us to analyze how policy design elements affect support in much more detail.