Which Policy Instruments Do Governments Use, and Which Ones Do Researchers Study?

The climate crisis has led to increased engagement from governments around the world to mitigate emissions. At the same time, academia has increasingly focused on how this can be done as quickly as possible, and lively debates have emerged on the effectiveness of different policies at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, academics are often constrained by a lack of cross-country, comparable and detailed information on policies. This raises the question whether the existing academic debate on policy instruments is skewed towards evaluating certain policies.We therefore examine which policy instruments governments actually use to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and which instruments tend to be studied.