Introduction

In particular, the anticipated economic effects of these policies play an important role in shaping the political debate over climate protection policies, which has been refuelled by the findings of the “Stern” report in 2006 (Stern, 2007). Accordingly, without further action, the overall costs of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global gross domestic product each year, while the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change could be limited to about 1% of global GDP per year. However, these findings as well as the implications for climate policy are highly disputed (Tol, 2006; Nordhaus, 2007; Heal, 2008). Similarly, recent efforts to assess the macroeconomic implications of climate policies, for example on employment or gross domestic product, have not produced a clear picture. Conflicting model results have contributed to the evolvement of an intensive debate on the costs of climate protection. “The Economics of Climate Change Policies: Macroeconomic Effects, Structural Adjustments and Technological Change” portrays this debate, analyses the reasons behind different modelling results, and highlights the weaknesses of existing studies. Furthermore, it presents its own empirical results which contribute to closing the gap with regard to structural effects and offers new insights into the modelling of technological change.