Brattle-Authored Articles Cited in the 2024 Economic Report of the President
Two articles coauthored by Associate Dr. Matthias van den Heuvel – “The Role of Venture Capital and Governments in Clean Energy: Lessons from the First Cleantech Bubble” and “Does Environmental Policy Uncertainty Hinder Investments Towards a Low-Carbon Economy?” – were cited in the 2024 Economic Report of the President. Produced by the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), the annual report outlines the Biden administration’s domestic and international economic policies and provides an overview of economic progress in the United States.
In the first article, published in Energy Economics, the authors analyze US startup data to better understand why venture capital initially did not prove successful in funding new clean energy technologies. The authors note that governments wishing to support clean energy startups should first implement demand-side policies that make investing in clean energy more viable. Only then should governments use targeted public sector investments to address any remaining funding gaps in cleantech innovation.
In the second article, a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, the authors use machine learning algorithms to construct a novel news-based index of US environmental and climate policy uncertainty available on a monthly basis over the 1990–2019 period and examine how elevated levels of environmental policy uncertainty impact investments in clean technologies. The authors’ results are consistent with the notion that policy uncertainty has adverse effects on investments for the low-carbon economy.
The full 2024 Economic Report of the President can be found below.
