The employment effects of environmental policy: An international comparison: Germany and USA

This paper deals with the problem of environmental policy and its effects on the level of employment. The first section sets the conceptual framework and evaluates the studies undertaken for Germany and USA, while in the second section broader issues of environmental policy are discussed. Despite the difficulty of securing reliable estimates of employment effects of environmental policy some conclusions can be drawn: The presently implemented conventional programs are purely technological measures and control mainly the symptoms and not the causes of environmental degradation. The macro-economic models seem to indicate that the overall employment effect is moderately positive.