LAUSR

Significance To address the climate crisis, many experts urge governments to make fossil fuels more expensive for consumers. We investigate the role of political leaders in raising taxes on, and reducing subsidies for, gasoline. We find that, in most cases, leaders appear to have no effect. Moreover, in countries where they seem to have an impact, most of the subsidy reforms they adopted were reversed within a year, and the vast majority were reversed within 5 y. Our evidence suggests that reforming fossil fuel taxes and subsidies—and making these reforms stick—is exceptionally difficult. Political leaders might have more success promoting other, less politically sensitive decarbonization policies, such as subsidizing renewable energy and making it more widely available.