Climate Policy in Practice: Which Instruments Do Governments Use, and Which Ones Do Researchers Study?

The policy instruments governments use to mitigate climate change have grown in number and diversity over time. Since the introduction of carbon taxes and feed-in tariffs in the early 1990s, governments have implemented an expanding range of economic, regulatory, informational, and voluntary instruments. Simultaneously, researchers from various disciplines have assessed the performance of these policies using diverse methods. Such academic analyses have spurred intense debates about the effectiveness of specific policy instruments and which ones governments should prioritize as the window to mitigate climate change rapidly closes. However, recent literature reviews on the effectiveness of climate policy instruments suggest that research may has focused on a limited subset of instruments. Indeed, academics are often constrained by a lack of cross-country, comparable and detailed information on policies. This raises concerns that the academic debate may be skewed toward evaluating certain policies, potentially failing to provide a comprehensive view of the broader spectrum of policy instruments used in practice. To address this, we examine which policy instruments governments actually use, which ones are most frequently studied by researchers, and in which geographic and sectoral contexts. We first developed a typology of climate policy instruments, drawing on datasets from the Climate Policy Database (CPDB) and Climate Policy Radar (CPR) and incorporating feedback from climate policy researchers. Using this typology, we conducted a bibliographic review in Scopus to identify the types of instruments most commonly researched, their geographic and sectoral focus, and the analytical approaches employed. We coded more than 1000 articles investigated at least one policy instruments and then we compared these findings with data on implemented policies over time compiled by the CPDB and CPR. Our analysis not only provides a policy typology that can be used by climate researchers but also highlights significant gaps in the existing literature, particularly regarding non-price-based policy instruments. Furthermore, research has disproportionately focused on a limited number of developed countries, revealing substantial blind spots in understanding the global landscape of climate policy.