WORKING PAPERS
van den Bijgaart, I., Jordaan, J. & Felici (2026) Economic Exposure and Climate Policy Support, CESifo working paper No. 12520
This paper quantifies the relationship between economic exposure to climate policies and climate policy support. We develop a stylised theoretical model to decompose exposure through income, energy spending and vehicle use, and identify consistent measures of these channels. Using detailed Dutch administrative data, we document substantial heterogeneity in exposure to climate policy, both across and within income groups. Combining these measures with survey data on climate policy support, we find that higher exposure is robustly associated with lower support for stronger climate policies across all three channels. This negative relationship holds even after accounting for a rich set of socio-demographic, municipality, and climate-belief controls. Further analysis reveals that high electricity rather than high natural gas spending is associated with reduced support, and vehicle fuel efficiency matters more for support than income-adjusted kilometres driven. Income exposure, proxied by the sectoral carbon-intensity of jobs, is particularly salient among older and lower-to-middle educated respondents. The estimated magnitudes are modest: a one-standard-deviation increase in any single exposure channel lowers the probability of support by at most two percentage points. Economic exposure thus emerges as a robust, theoretically grounded determinant of support, shifting it at the margin.
van den Bijgaart, I. & Löfgren, Å. (2026) Climate Policy for Coordination, CESifo working paper No. 12916
Decarbonizing basic materials industries requires coordinated investment between downstream firms adopting abatement technologies and upstream input providers. We model the resulting indirect network effects, which generate a no-investment equilibrium alongside a coordinated one. Carbon pricing and non-discriminatory subsidies cannot resolve this coordination failure without overshooting the optimum. Subsidies targeted at firms below a cost threshold implement the optimal coordinated equilibrium without distortion. We further show that excluding the lowest-cost firms, who invest voluntarily once others lead, shrinks the subsidized group, and that targeting remains effective under imperfect observability and imprecise targeting. Our results provide formal support for targeted industrial policy.
PUBLICATIONS (peer-reviewed)
Löfgren, Å., Ahlvik, L., van den Bijgaart, I., Coria, J., Jaraitė, J., Johnsson, F., & Rootzén (2024) Green industrial policy for climate action in the basic materials industry. Climatic Change, 177, 147
Ahlvik, L. & van den Bijgaart, I. (2024). Screening green innovation through carbon pricing. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 124, 102932.
van den Bijgaart, I. & Cerruti, D. (2024). The effect of information on market activity: Evidence from vehicle recalls. Review of Economics and Statistics, 106(1), 230-245.
van den Bijgaart, I., Klenert, D., Mattauch, L., & Sulikova, S. (2024). Healthy climate, healthy bodies: Optimal fuel taxation and physical activity. Economica, 91(361), 93-122.
van den Bijgaart, I. & Rodriguez, M., (2023) Closing wells: fossil development and abandonment in the energy transition. Resource and Energy Economics, 74
Funke, F., Mattauch, L., van den Bijgaart, I. , M., Godfray, C., Hepburn, C., Klenert, D., Springmann M., & Treich N., (2022) Toward Optimal Meat Pricing: Is It Time to Tax Meat Consumption? Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 16(2), pp 219-240
Sterner, T., Barbier, E.B., Bateman, I., van den Bijgaart, I., Crépin, A-S., Edenhofer, O., Fischer, C., et al. (2019) Policy design for the Anthropocene. Nature Sustainability, Vol. 2, pp 14-21.
Hamann, M., Berry, K., Chaigneau, T., Curry, T., Heilmayr, R., Henriksson, P., Hentati-Sundberg, J., Jina, A., Lindkvist, E., Lopez-Maldonado, Y., Nieminen, E., Piaggio, M., Qiu, J., Rocha, J.C., Schill, C., Shepon, A., Tilman, A., van den Bijgaart, I., & Wu, T. (2018) Inequality and the Biosphere. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol. 43, pp 61-83
van den Bijgaart, I.M., & Smulders, J.A., (2018) Does a recession call for less stringent environmental policy? A partial-equilibrium second-best analysis. Environmental and Resource Economics, Vol. 70, pp 807-834
Gerlagh R., van den Bijgaart, I.M., Michielsen T., & Nijland, N., (2018) Fiscal policy and CO2 emissions of new passenger cars in the EU. Environmental and Resource Economics, Vol. 69, pp 103-134
van den Bijgaart, I.M. (2017) The unilateral implementation of a sustainable growth path with directed technical change. European Economic Review, Vol. 91, pp. 305-327
van den Bijgaart, I.M., Gerlagh R., & Liski M. (2016) A simple formula for the social cost of carbon. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Vol. 77, pp. 75–94.
Recipient of the 2016 JEEM best paper award
BOOK CHAPTERS
van den Bijgaart, I., Lindman, Å., Löfgren, Å., & Söderholm, P. (2025). Green industrial policy: Key challenges and policy design in decarbonizing the basic materials industries. In T. Lundgren, M. Bostian, & S. Managi (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Energy, Natural Resource, and Environmental Economics (Vol. 2, pp. 213–221). Elsevier.
WORK IN PROGRESS
Firm heterogeneity and technology adoption in the green transition (with Mauricio Rodriguez)
Carbon pricing in production networks (with Laura Egelmeers, Vincent Schippers and Arjan Trinks)
Sequential climate policies (with Koert Rang)
DORMANT RESEARCH
Too slow a change? Deep habits, consumption shifts and transitory tax policy [download]