EnvEmploi

Environmental policies and labour market effects

Summary

Environmental protection and unemployment are the two major concerns of citizens, not only in Europe but also in other OECD countries. They are also major economic policy issues: reducing unemployment means enabling the younger generations to plan for the future, and limiting polluting emissions and environmental degradation means ensuring that this future is not mortgaged.

However, reducing polluting emissions or limiting the effects of global warming, for example, requires imposing constraints on companies in the form of new taxes and emission quotas. These new constraints affect the way companies produce and can have adverse effects on employment. Thus, favoring the environment can lead to increased unemployment, and for this reason, these two concerns are often presented in the public debate as irreconcilable. In recent news, the official exit of the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement in November 2020, with the stated goal of protecting American jobs, reflects this fact.

This project aims to explore the heterogeneity of the effects of environmental policy on employment as well as the transformations in the structure of employment and production processes generated by these reallocation mechanisms. It aims to answer two important questions:
- How do environmental policies affect the labor market and are there sectors and/or types of jobs more impacted than others by environmental preservation measures?
- What types of environmental policies and employment policies should be combined to promote the greening of the economy and accompany the resulting labor market transformations?

Research Team

Xavier Pautrel - GRANEM
Pierre-Jean Messe - GAINS
Rayan Chebbi-Giovanetti GRANEM

Financing

2020

On the call for projects of the experimental ComUE UA-LMU :

• University of Angers
• Le Mans University