Environmental Policymaking with Political Learning

I propose a model of environmental policymaking with electoral accountability in which voters learn about politicians' policy preferences and environmental policies' appropriateness by observing past policy choices and outcomes. Compared to a benevolent policymaker benchmark, I show that reputational concerns can lead to policy distortions, as a result of the interdependence between voters' learning about implemented policies and their induced preferences over politicians: when favourable policy outcomes lead voters to prefer policy persistence, the desire to appear likely to implement voters' interim optimal policy can stifle the implementation of the ex-ante optimal environmental policy.