Political leaders with backgrounds in business – bad for climate mitigation?

Abstract

To which leadership characteristics should voters who care about climate pay attention when they vote? The literature on how the ideology of political parties in power affects climate policy outcomes is abundant, but there is no similar literature that assesses the individual characteristics of government leaders. This assessment is the first study of its kind, building on a dataset of government leaders of OECD countries for the period 1992- 2017. We find that the professional background of leaders is the single most important trait that has the strongest effect. In particular, higher emissions and lower renewable energy deployment are more likely to occur during the tenure of former business people or economists. Our results suggest that voters and pressure groups should pay attention to candidates’ professional backgrounds, in addition to their party’s ideology. Keywords: carbon emissions, political leaders, renewable energy, business