Welcome to my website!
I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at Leiden University and an affiliate member of the CESifo network. I received my PhD from Tilburg University in 2024. My thesis was awarded the EAERE Best Doctoral Dissertation Award.
I am a macroeconomist who works on topics related to the environment, and on climate policy in particular. I do both theoretical and empirical work.
You can find my CV here.
Policy-induced innovation in clean technologies: Evidence from the car market, with Herman Vollebergh. 2025. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 12(3), 565-598.
Working paper (2024) | Privacy statement | Media coverage: ESB, NRC, VoxEU
Gender differences in the employment effects of climate policy, with Malik Çürük and Tobias Wendler. 2025. Energy Economics, 145, 108394.
This paper studies the relationship between climate policy, market power and innovation. Using linked data on patent applications and firms' balance sheets, I find empirical evidence that (i) the direction of innovation is path dependent, and (ii) firms with a higher degree of market power are, on average, more invested in dirty technologies than their direct competitors. These findings suggest that climate policy affects market leaders and laggards differently. I then develop a model of directed technical change and the environment with strategic interaction between competing firms. Firms compete for market power by innovating in clean or dirty technologies. A carbon tax can decrease the effective technological distance between two competitors, and thus affects both the intensity and the direction of innovation. In the model, the increase of a carbon tax can sharply increase clean innovation while also increasing dirty innovation by some firms. Calibration results show that the transition to a green economy may temporarily decrease aggregate market power, as measured by the average markup, by strengthening competition in markets, and lead to an overall increase in innovation.
This paper investigates the effect of energy prices, a proxy for an energy tax, on the labor share. Using aggregated administrative data from 15 European countries and 56 sectors for the years 2000-2016, and applying a shift-share instrumental variable approach, we find that the energy price has a negative and quantitatively significant effect on the labor share both in the short and medium-run. Exploring the potential mechanisms, we show that the complementarity between labor and energy is the driver of this negative effect while reallocation among firms, changes in aggregate markups and the revenue to value-added ratio induced by energy price shocks have limited effects. We also document that energy prices increase the capital-labor ratio and do not influence the capital share, which indicates that the degree of substitution between energy and labor is lower than the substitution between energy and capital. These results imply potentially sizable distributional impacts of climate change policies as the transitional costs differ across the primary factors.
Carbon dioxide removal and directed technical change, with Sjak Smulders
The economic effects of air pollution in the Netherlands, with Lieke Beekers
On the economic effects of climate policies. 2024. Doctoral Thesis, Tilburg University. CentER, Center for Economic Research.
Groene innovatie vooral bij grote bedrijven in Brabant en de Randstad, with Herman Vollebergh. 2025. ESB, 110(4843), 114-117.
Promotiebespreking. 2024. ESB, 109(4839), 483.
Standards for greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy induce innovation in clean car technologies, with Herman Vollebergh. 2024. VoxEU.
Stringente standaarden stimuleren innovatie in doorbraaktechnologieën, with Herman Vollebergh. 2022. ESB, 107(4814), 455-457.
Email:
r.l.rozendaal@law.leidenuniv.nl
Office:
B205, Kamerlingh Onnes building, Leiden University
Steenschuur 25, 2311 ES Leiden, the Netherlands