Climate Change Mitigation: How Effective is Green Quantitative Easing?
Climate Change Mitigation: How Effective is Green Quantitative Easing?
We develop a two sector integrated assessment model with incomplete markets to analyze the effectiveness of green quantitative easing in complementing fiscal policies for climate change mitigation. We model green quantitative easing through a given outstanding stock of bonds held by a monetary authority and its portfolio allocation between a clean (green) and a dirty (brown) sector of production. Our key research question is whether the monetary authority can effectively contribute to a reduction of global damages caused by carbon emissions. Our findings show that green quantitative easing does not lead to a perfect crowding out of capital and thus has real effects in the long-run. Since it only indirectly affects the allocation of production to dirty and clean technologies and since its overall economic size is relatively small, green quantitative easing is, however, a less effective climate change mitigating policy instrument than carbon taxes. We conclude that green quantitative easing might be a quantitatively important complement to fiscal policies if governments only insufficiently coordinate on implementing green fiscal policies
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Published August 15, 2021