Research
How does exposure to climate change influence firms’ lobbying behavior in a polarized political environment? As climate change continues to accelerate environmental degradation, exacerbate biodiversity loss, and escalate public health risks across the globe, an increase in policy pressure to address climate change across regulatory and legislative venues has broad impacts on the private sector. These changes pose challenges for firms that must respond to the risks and opportunities accompanying policy interventions. Firms endogenously seek to shape policy-making and regulation to minimize costs and maximize opportunities within their industry through lobbying Congress or federal agencies. However, we do not have sufficient theory or empirical evidence explaining how firms behave differently when seeking opportunities compared to avoiding costs. I test established models of firm venue selection for lobbying to investigate how firms seek to shape both policy and regulation. Using data from quarterly earning calls from publicly traded firms that indicate exposure to climate change opportunities, regulation, and physical risk, I investigate how firm exposure and opportunity influence venue selection and lobbying strategy. Moreover, I use data from over 2000 publicly traded firms’ earning calls between 2000 and 2020 to analyze whether political partisanship affects these strategic decisions differently when firms aim to exploit opportunities instead of when mitigating costs. This paper contributes to our understanding of lobbying venue selection on widely salient policy objects that have become increasingly polarized.
How do interest group contributions to Congress shape partisan positions on environmental policy? Furthermore, to what extent do industry contributions influence legislators' support for environmental policy independent of party affiliation? I consider the effect of the natural resource and energy industry on legislative party cohesion on environmental policy in the House and Senate between 1990 and 2022. Using data scoring legislators' support for environmental legislation through roll call votes and agenda-setting tactics year-over-year, I show an independent negative relationship between industry contributions to Congress and environmental policy scores for members. This trend cuts across parties in the House of Representatives and consistently affects Democrats in the Senate, whereas ideology and party explain anti-environmental behavior for Senate Republicans. My model is less reliable in deciphering the average effect of industry contributions within the Senate over time. These findings suggest that asymmetrical industry spending by the party within Congress drives legislative party cohesion within the Republican Party and creates a dynamic where a small number of Democrats receive disproportionate funding from interest groups as veto players. These results illustrate a policy strategy for powerful industries that drive cohesion on environmental policy for Republicans on average while creating environmental defectors for Democrats on the margin.
Charting a Just Transition through U.S. Green Industrial Policy
What shapes voters’ preferences in the design of energy transition assistance accompanying climate policy? Transitioning to a de-carbonized economy using green industrial policy from fossil fuels incurs various costs. There is substantial variation in who bears the transition costs depending on policy design, strategic allocation of resources, partisanship, and interest group influence in policy design. The shift toward green industrial policy in the U.S. is designed to reduce backlash to climate policy and foment climate coalitions. Policy design that de-carbonizes the economy while addressing climate transition costs is crucial for coalescing a broad coalition supporting policy addressing the climate crisis. Using a nationally representative survey sample of Americans, I estimate the concern that the energy transition will have adverse economic consequences at the Congressional-district level. I then use those estimates to assess the spatially environmental, economic, and demographic factors that predict concern over the energy transition. Finally, I assess the contingency of climate policy bundles with a conjoint experiment that varies climate mitigation efforts, transition assistance policies, and labor concessions. I hypothesize that the type of Just Transition policy is paramount for contingent support of climate policies. In other words, building a climate coalition requires targeting population subsets with credible commitments to address energy transition costs while overcoming local barriers to renewable energy projects despite potential partisan considerations. I plan to investigate these claims using a spatial model and a conjoint survey experiment.
