IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v58y2026i5p988-1004.html

Local government and environmental policy: empirical evidence on the link between spending and regulation1

Author

Listed:
  • Luiz de Mello
  • João Tovar Jalles

Abstract

Subnational governments around the world often enjoy considerable autonomy to pursue policy objectives through a combination of tax, spending and regulatory instruments. In the area of environmental policies, they can levy carbon, congestion or fuel taxes, provide subsidies for green innovation, and/or set a variety of emissions standards and environmental norms. This paper reports evidence for up to 18 advanced economies over the period 1995–2020 of an association between spending and environmental regulation at the local level of administration, controlling for the policy autonomy enjoyed by the local governments. Where autonomy is low, local governments tend to substitute environmental regulation for spending, but this substitution effects dissipates as policy autonomy increases.

Suggested Citation

  • Luiz de Mello & João Tovar Jalles, 2026. "Local government and environmental policy: empirical evidence on the link between spending and regulation1," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(5), pages 988-1004, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:58:y:2026:i:5:p:988-1004
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2025.2461813
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2025.2461813
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2025.2461813?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:58:y:2026:i:5:p:988-1004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.