BMBF funds new research project on climate change and structural change

08 May 2020 – The new research project ROCHADE: “Mitigation Policies in a Globalized and Developing World: The Role of Structural Change and Distributional Effects” studies distributional effects of climate policies and climate change effects in the agricultural sector. It takes structural change explicitly into account and explores policies to overcome adverse distributional effects. Structural change refers to the transformation process from an agriculture-based economy via an industry- towards a services- and knowledge-based economy. Regional project foci are Germany, India and developing countries. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the funding priority "Economics of Climate Change II" from 2019 until 2021.

At the Justus Liebig University Giessen, team member Dr. Michael Hübler leads the subproject C dealing with historical drivers of structural change and distributional (sectoral) effects of climate policy. Team member Eduard Bukin works on this subproject based on econometric and economic modelling methods. Dr. Marian Leimbach at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) coordinates the entire project and develops together with his team a multi-sector growth model. The director of the Kiel Institute (IfW), Prof. Gabriel Felbermayr, Ph.D., and his team develop a calibrated advanced trade model to study climate change effects in the agricultural sector. At the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) in Berlin, Prof. Dr. Mathias Kalkuhl, Dr. Jan Steckel and their teams examine distributional climate policy effects at the household level and the relation of industrialization and CO₂ emissions. Across the subprojects, we define common scenarios, couple models with different sectoral and regional foci and derive joint policy recommendations.