Announcing is Bad, Delaying is Worse: Another Pitfall in Well-Intended Climate Policy

It is frequently observed that the implementation of green policies is delayed compared to the initial announcement. Considering a setting with a representative monopolist extracting a non-renewable resource, we demonstrate that announcing a green policy, but then delaying its implementation, is associated with a larger cumulative extraction at any point in time than announcing a late implementation of this policy at the outset.