DeFiPP Seminar - Italo Colantone (University of Bocconi)

The political Consequences of Green Policies : Evidence from Italy

Abstract
Green policies may induce strong distributional consequences. These may in turn be politically consequential. In particular, they may fuel support for right-wing populist parties to the extent that green issues start being perceived as a concern of the elites, with disproportionate costs on common people. In this paper, we shed light on the political implications of green policies by exploiting the recent introduction of a traffic ban on polluting cars in the city of Milan. We investigate the link between the distributional impact of the policy, voting behavior, and people's environmental attitudes. We exploit original survey data covering around 1,000 car owners. About one third of them were directly affected by the policy as their car could not circulate anymore within the city. Through a diff-in-diff approach, we find that treated individuals were more likely to vote for the populist right party Lega at the European Parliament elections held after the announcement of the policy, in 2019. We do not find evidence of a parallel shift in attitudes and behavior away from environmental concerns. Overall, the electoral shift seems to reflect a pocketbook response, and closely tracks the policy's distributional impact.

(Authors: Italo Colantone, Livio Di Lonardo, Yotam Margalit, Marco Percoco)

Contact : Christian Kiedaisch - christian.kiedaisch@unamur.be
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