The Effects of Policy Mix on the Pollutant Emissions in the United Kingdom
The Effects of Policy Mix on the Pollutant Emissions in the United Kingdom

Summary/Abstract: The article demonstrates the ecological consequences of the fiscal-monetary policy mix that is used to boost economy during the business cycles. This is an important issue especially in the crisis and post-crisis periods, when a new balance between the monetary and fiscal policies is sought after by the governments and central banks. The authors perform their analysis with the empirical environmental dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, using the quarterly data for the United Kingdom of the period 1975–2016. The results indicate that monetary macroeconomic stimulation is significantly more environment-friendly than fiscal expansion. This is mainly because fiscal expansion tends to crowd out private investment and shift the production from capital-intensive towards more labour-intensive techniques, which results in an increased pollution. Monetary expansion, in turn, has a stimulating effect on the accumulation of the new physical capital, which tends to entail less pollution in a highly developed country like the United Kingdom.

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