Research
Main Research
"A profound and rapid transition toward carbon-neutral production is necessary to mitigate climate change. However, the economic costs of this transition are unlikely to be evenly shared: workers employed in polluting, energy-intensive industries are expected to face greater losses compared to those in cleaner sectors. This paper develops an environmental dynamic general equilibrium model with high- and low-skill workers and segmented labour markets to study how the optimal carbon tax addresses the market failure from carbon emissions while generating distributional and welfare effects. In particular, I examine how labour market frictions influence the optimal tax (with reference to the full labour mobility scenario) and how a uniform lump-sum rebate affects the welfare of different household types. Results show that, although the policy improves aggregate welfare, low-skill households experience welfare losses; a differentiated rebate scheme—where a larger share of tax revenues is directed to low-skill households—can enhance the welfare of both groups while maintaining aggregate efficiency. This is crucial for fostering political acceptability regarding climate policies."
"I develop a multisectoral neoclassical growth model with climate externalities, heterogeneous households, and input market frictions to examine the interplay between climate change and inequality. The final good is produced using two intermediate energy goods. The dirty energy good generates damages that reduce the Total Factor Productivity of the final good. Each intermediate energy good is produced by combining sector-specific capital and sector-specific labour (clean/dirty). High-skill households supply labour exclusively to the clean sector, whereas low-skill households are employed solely in the dirty energy sector. I investigate how input market frictions affect the per-unit optimal carbon tax and study the impact of this tax on both aggregate and disaggregated welfare. I highlight that the optimal carbon tax is not affected by market frictions in the inputs' market under the standard calibration; however, I show that low-skill households experience welfare losses under environmental policy, even though aggregate welfare improves. Third, I analyse an alternative policy instrument (a tax on dirty capital goods rental rate instead of a per-unit carbon tax), showing that this policy mitigates the adverse effects on low-skill households. Finally, I demonstrate that implementing a non-uniform tax rebate scheme, where rebates are distributed asymmetrically between the two household types, can improve the welfare of both representative households under both taxation schemes. To conclude, a comparison between policies with sector-specific inputs and policies with fully mobile inputs is discussed. "
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vYZjDtFEcew2NV0qz1KreLcnWPfZkqb-/view?usp=drive_link
In this paper, I provide a heterogeneous-agents environmental dynamic general equilibrium model with segmented labour/capital markets and financial frictions. I consider a closed economy operating in discrete time, comprising two representative households, a brown household working in the polluting industry and a green household working in the clean firm (or in the banking sector), a government, and various types of firms. It features five sectors: i) a competitive final sector producing a homogeneous final good using brown and green inputs, ii) a green and a brown competitive sector, producing green and brown inputs using labour and sector-specific capital, iii) a competitive capital-producing sector, providing sector-specific capital to brown and green firms and buying back undepreciated capital, and iv) a frictional financial sector à la Gertler (2011), collecting deposits from households and providing loans to brown and green firms. I investigate the interaction between financial frictions, climate policies and inequality in the transition toward a balanced growth path. A comparison between the welfare effects of a per-unit tax and a loan capital tax reveals that both measures have similar effects on mitigating the externality, improving aggregate welfare; however, the brown representative household experiences a welfare loss compared to the Business-As-Usual allocation if tax revenues are rebated uniformly across brown and green households and the emission tax is implemented. Ceteris paribus regarding the uniform rebate, the loan rate tax induces welfare gains for both households."