Effectiveness Evaluation of Sustainable Climate Policies

Dear Colleagues,

It is with great pleasure that we launch this call for contributions to a Special Issue of Sustainability that will focus on the topic of “Effectiveness Evaluation of Sustainable Climate Policies”.

Many countries have adopted several economic instruments, such as tax and emissions trading, to deal with climate change. These policies could theoretically encourage the emitters to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and realize the green transition. However, several economic, political, or social factors could to a certain extent influence the effectiveness of these policies.

Both policymakers and researchers pay attention to the policy effect of these economic instruments in coping with climate change while realizing the sustainable development of the economic system. Therefore, they should make full use of advanced data-driven methodologies, including econometric and machine learning approaches, to scientifically evaluate the effect of these policies. On the one hand, they could extensively collect the necessary data from the databases, statistical yearbooks, as well as the news text related to the research issues. In specific, the unstructured data related to the policies could also be utilized in the relevant studies through text analytical methodologies. On the other hand, they could consciously propose or utilize the cutting-edge data-driven methodologies to better evaluate the effectiveness of the policies. Widely-used econometric approaches may suffer from methodological shortcomings, and then the respective improved models, especially those coupling with the latest machine learning methods, can be adopted in the respective studies.

This Special Issue will collate a selection of high-quality and novel research contributions evaluating the effectiveness of climate policies and improving their mechanism design with advanced data-driven approaches.

Suggested themes for this Special Issue may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The implication of the text analytical approach in the climate policy effectiveness evaluation;
• The improvement of econometric models in evaluating the effectiveness of climate policies;
• The implication of machine or deep learning approaches in the effectiveness of climate policies;
• The impact(s) of climate policy on greenhouse gas emissions reduction;
• The impact(s) of climate policy on green transition of economies;
• The impact(s) of climate policy on optimization and adjustment of economic sectors;
• The impact(s) of climate policy on development of renewable energy;
• The impact(s) of climate policy on labor market structure adjustment of incumbent sectors;
• The impact(s) of climate policy on green technological innovation;
• The impact(s) of climate policy on ESG decisions of incumbent firms;
• The impact(s) of climate policy on competitiveness of incumbent firms.

We welcome contributions of all types, including empirical or theoretical studies or relevant review articles. Submissions are welcome from any disciplinary perspective, and multi- or cross-disciplinary research is encouraged given the nature of the subject matter.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Xu Wang
Dr. Zhenhua Liu
Dr. Zhenhua Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• climate change
• environmental policy
• emission trading
• carbon tax
• green transition
• econometrics
• text analysis
• machine learning
• deep learning