Dear Colleagues,

The so-called traditional economic goals of economic policy, such as economic growth, employment, low and stable inflation, and exchange rate stability or, more precisely, external balance, have begun to be viewed from the 1970s as a result of the incentives of the Club of Rome and also through the prism of achieving sustainable growth. This has been reflected not only by actual economic policy on the ground but also through the scope of scientific research. At the present time, it seems imperative to accelerate the research in economic policy and, especially, to link it with the sustainable economic policy objectives and thereby expand the existing literature in this area. Indeed, the creation of a factual and well-founded economic basis for the processes that are now taking place – including the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the current activities of the US President Biden in the field of climate change, or the onset of the Industry 4.0 and the transition to sustainable technologies, digitization, and smart factories – is of particular importance.

This Special Issue is therefore devoted to the issue of economic policy-making and the subsequent impacts on its intended objectives while special emphasis is placed on the sustainability of economic policy and the achievement of sustainable goals. The issue welcomes articles which examine the influence of modern tools of central authorities and their environmental aspects, the setting of the economic–political mix, and the area of the tax mix as such. Submissions should involve an analysis of the role of direct and indirect taxes as well as environmental taxes. The role of subsidy policy and the expenditure side of budgets should be taken into consideration, as should the interaction between economic and climate goals, including carbon neutrality objectives.

This Special Issue is open to publications from the field of economic policy, economics, taxes, business economics, and law. It is open to papers which seek to explore the link between traditional economic and climate goals and the issues of carbon neutrality goals, reducing the use of fossil fuels, and reducing greenhouse gases from an economic point of view. Publications that examine the impact of individual economic policies in this area, and their specific implications, as well as the impact of the institutional and regulatory environment in this area are particularly welcome. Moreover, the application of new sophisticated methods and ideas and the creation of new scenarios and their comparison within the world economy, for example, in the European Union, in the USA or in the BRICS countries, are also welcome.

Submitted articles should focus on the following areas:

• Development of sustainable economic policy concepts and analysis of the impact of individual subpolicies or institutional environment and legal regulation.
• Evaluation of the impact of setting environmental taxes and the tax mix on the achievement of sustainable climate goals.
• Setting up subsidy programmes and the influence of the expenditure side of public budgets on the achievement of sustainable climate goals.
• Economic evaluation of the impact of the fourth industrial revolution, the transition to Industry 4.0, sustainable technologies (such as electromobility, hydrogen technologies), digitization, and virtual technologies on the achievement of climate goals.
• Assessment of the impacts of regional climate commitments (e.g., European Green Deal).
• Analysis of economic limits of climate goals.

Prof. Dr. Igor Kotlán
Dr. Zuzana Machová
Prof. Dr. Christiana Kliková
Dr. Veronika Nálepová
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• economic policy
• environmental taxation
• tax mix
• climate change
• carbon neutrality
• greenhouse gas reduction
• Industry 4.0
• digitization
• sustainable technologies