Low Carbon Transition in Emerging Economies: Climate Policy, Carbon Pricing and the Effect on Employment

Many emerging economies are on the front line of the devastating impacts of global warming such as desertification and extreme weather events, but, for historical and political reasons, they follow ambitious growth targets with seemingly little concern for climate change and environmental degradation. Focusing on the case of Turkey, this book investigates the economic impacts of possible climate change policies to help meet the required mitigation targets and transition to a low carbon economy. In order to reach net-zero targets by 2050 in compliance with the Paris Agreement, Turkey must introduce policies that promote low carbon investments, green jobs and low carbon employment more broadly. This book explores the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of a carbon pricing mechanism by developing an econometric vector autoregression (VAR) model to analyse key data sets. This time series analysis provides insights on a macro level, dealing with aggregate data in which the role and complexity of micro interferences disappear, allowing for the discovery of patterns and changes over time. Thus, the book contributes to the literature on methodology by arguing that time series analysis is one of the best-fitting approaches to estimate possible impacts of climate change policies on an economy. Additionally, the results of the model are compared and contrasted with similar data from other emerging economies to identify potential common policy solutions between countries at a similar stage of development. This book is vital reading for researchers interested in climate policy, the economics of climate change and environmental economics.