Technological Change, Energy, Environment and Economic Growth in Japan

A considerable amount of research at the micro level has shown that that carbon tax combined with research subsidy may be regarded as an optimal policy in view of diffusing low carbon technologies for the benefit of the society. The paper exploits the macro economic approach of the endogenous growth models with technological change for a comparative assessment of these policy measures on the economic growth in the US and Japan in the medium and the long run. The results of our micro estimates reveal several important differences across the Japanese and US energy firms: lower elasticity of innovation production function in R&D expenditure, lower probability of a radical innovation, and larger advances of dirty technologies in Japan. This may explain our quantitative findings of stronger reliance on carbon tax than on research subsidies in Japan relative to the US