
Open access
Author
Date
2021-04Type
- Working Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
To shed light on the political inertia around environmental legislation, I study the re sponse of US senators to public opinion while controlling for special interest pressure. I combine data on public opinion (PO) on climate change – estimated by multilevel regression with poststratification – with campaign contributions from the extractive industries to indi cate special interest (SI) influence, and use senator fixed effects, instrumental variables and the timing of senate elections for identification. PO has a strong impact on environmental legislation. The effects are different for the two parties: Republicans react to PO in election cycles, whereas Democrats are responsive through their whole term. The responsiveness of elected officials to environmental opinion is surprising: while Americans often favour environmental regulation in general, they tend to consider it as of low importance. I discuss possible explanations. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000478825Publication status
publishedJournal / series
Economics Working Paper SeriesVolume
Publisher
CER-ETH – Center of Economic Research at ETH ZurichOrganisational unit
03635 - Bretschger, Lucas (emeritus) / Bretschger, Lucas (emeritus)
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ETH Bibliography
yes
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