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Researchers have debated the relative importance of technology push and demand pull policies in the adoption of environmental technologies. Here, we examine how internationally distributed technology push and demand pull policies interact to support the diffusion of a renewable energy technology. We analyze 40 years (1974–2013) of solar photovoltaic policies in three countries: USA, Germany, and China. We identify four phases of international policy interactions: in Phase 1 (1974–1990), the USA launched technology push policies; in Phase 2 (1991–2003), Germany pioneered demand pull policies; in Phase 3 (2004–2008), China responded to international market incentive programs with a scaling up of manufacturing; and in Phase 4 (2008–2013), Germany reduced whereas China increased demand policies. Our contributions are threefold: First, we demonstrate the importance of “manufacturing push” alongside the standard technology push and demand pull factors; second, we show how global adoption was spurred by the complementarity of policy efforts across national boundaries, while considering the tradeoffs in climate change policy between increasing global environmental welfare and improving national economic development; third, we demonstrate three generic patterns of cross-national policy complementarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Assessment of responsiveness' role in mechanisms for adjusting economic incentives. • Agent-based model of feed-in tariff for solar adoption in Germany, Spain, Switzerland. • More responsive designs meet deployment policy goal accurately and lower uncertainty. • Surprisingly, results show diminishing returns of responsiveness that add policy cost. • Country-specific attributes shown to influence solar power diffusion patterns. A rapid, global diffusion of clean energy technologies is central to the efforts to curb global carbon dioxide emissions. Deployment policies based on economic incentives have proved effective in accelerating the uptake of renewable technologies, such as solar photovoltaics, and could quicken the adoption of others. However, their outcomes were often uncertain and costly as many countries struggled to adjust incentives while technology prices fell rapidly. This study addresses this challenge by investigating the role of responsiveness – the policy's ability to react to changes in the context in which it operates – in the design of mechanisms for adjusting incentives over time. This paper employs an agent-based model to evaluate quantitatively six policy designs with varying degrees of responsiveness for adjusting a feed-in tariff for solar photovoltaics in three countries – Germany, Spain, and Switzerland – for over a decade. Our first finding confirms that more responsive policy designs tended to produce policies that meet their goals more accurately and certainly. Between the least and the most responsive designs, deviation from policy goals was reduced by 60% and uncertainty was reduced by more than 50%. Our results also suggest that policy responsiveness could have diminishing returns: improvements in the policy's accuracy and certainty tended to become smaller while policy costs per capita tended to become larger as design responsiveness increased. Finally, simulation results show how country-specific attributes influence the diffusion pattern of the technology. These findings have major implications for the design of future deployment policies supporting the diffusion of clean energy technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]