Environmental Macroeconomics
Climate change is an increasingly challenging issue, as greenhouse gas emissions are still on the rise globally while the onset of climate damages is being felt all around the world (IPCC 2019). In addition, accelerating loss of natural resources, biodiversity, natural ecosystems, and the services they provide (IPBES 2019) raise threats for the prosperity of economies through the decline of natural capital (Dasgupta 2021). This research group studies the growth and distributional impacts of climate change, environmental policies and changes in natural capital stocks, at different scales, from households to sectors, regions and countries. To this end, the group employs macroeconomic and coupled economy-environment modelling, as well as econometric methods.
First, climate change creates physical risks for economic performance, both for long-run growth and through short-term economic fluctuations. In particular, temperature increases and extreme weather events have been shown to have negative impacts on aggregate output. Specific questions addressed by the research group include how extreme weather events, such as high precipitations, impact economic performance at a sub-national level, or how heat stress might affect future growth through its impact on labor productivity.
Second, policies aimed at decarbonizing economies produce macroeconomic changes, such as sectoral reallocations and shifts in production and consumption patterns. To study the effect of policies aimed at reducing emissions, the group develops integrated assessment models, which couple climate dynamics with economic models. These can be geared towards the analysis of long-run trends, in the vein of Nordhaus’s DICE model, or business cycles, with E-DSGE models. The group tackles questions such as: What are the impacts of carbon taxes on different sectors and households? How do environmental policies affect short-run economic fluctuations, and what are the consequences for the design of monetary policy?
Third, sustainably managing natural capital stocks requires understanding its role in economic development and human welfare. The research group explores questions such as the role of natural capital stocks in total factor productivity changes, or the impact of declining natural assets for aggregate output.
Workpackage 1: Climate change and physical risks to economies
Workpackage 2: Macroeconomic and distributional impacts of climate mitigation policies
Workpackage 3: Natural capital (including biodiversity) and economic development
Research Cluster
Economic Dynamics and StabilityYour contact
Refereed Publications
A Multi-Model Assessment of Inequality and Climate Change
in: Nature Climate Change, October 2024
Abstract
<p>Climate change and inequality are critical and interrelated defining issues for this century. Despite growing empirical evidence on the economic incidence of climate policies and impacts, mainstream model-based assessments are often silent on the interplay between climate change and economic inequality. For example, all the major model comparisons reviewed in IPCC neglect within-country inequalities. Here we fill this gap by presenting a model ensemble of eight large-scale Integrated Assessment Models belonging to different model paradigms and featuring economic heterogeneity. We study the distributional implications of Paris-aligned climate target of 1.5 degree and include different carbon revenue redistribution schemes. Moreover, we account for the economic inequalities resulting from residual and avoided climate impacts. We find that price-based climate policies without compensatory measures increase economic inequality in most countries and across models. However, revenue redistribution through equal per-capita transfers can offset this effect, leading to on average decrease in the Gini index by almost two points. When climate benefits are included, inequality is further reduced, but only in the long term. Around mid-century, the combination of dried-up carbon revenues and yet limited climate benefits leads to higher inequality under the Paris target than in the Reference scenario, indicating the need for further policy measures in the medium term.</p>
Working Papers
Optimal Monetary Policy in a Two-sector Environmental DSGE Model
in: IWH Discussion Papers, No. 18, 2024
Abstract
<p>In this paper, we discuss how environmental damage and emission reduction policies affect the conduct of monetary policy in a two-sector (clean and dirty) dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. In particular, we examine the optimal response of the interest rate to changes in sectoral inflation due to standard supply shocks, conditional on a given environmental policy. We then compare the performance of a nonstandard monetary rule with sectoral inflation targets to that of a standard Taylor rule. Our main results are as follows: first, the optimal monetary policy is affected by the existence of environmental policy (carbon taxation), as this introduces a distortion in the relative price level between the clean and dirty sectors. Second, compared with a standard Taylor rule targeting aggregate inflation, a monetary policy rule with asymmetric responses to sector-specific inflation allows for reduced volatility in the inflation gap, output gap, and emissions. Third, a nonstandard monetary policy rule allows for a higher level of welfare, so the two goals of welfare maximization and emission minimization can be aligned.</p>
A Multi-Model Assessment of Inequality and Climate Change
in: Research Square, 2024
Abstract
<p>Climate change and inequality are critical and interrelated defining issues for this century. Despite growing empirical evidence on the economic incidence of climate policies and impacts, mainstream model-based assessments are often silent on the interplay between climate change and economic inequality. For example, all the major model comparisons reviewed in IPCC neglect within-country inequalities. Here we fill this gap by presenting a model ensemble of eight large-scale Integrated Assessment Models belonging to different model paradigms and featuring economic heterogeneity. We study the distributional implications of Paris-aligned climate target of 1.5 degree and include different carbon revenue redistribution schemes. Moreover, we account for the economic inequalities resulting from residual and avoided climate impacts. We find that price-based climate policies without compensatory measures increase economic inequality in most countries and across models. However, revenue redistribution through equal per-capita transfers can offset this effect, leading to on average decrease in the Gini index by almost two points. When climate benefits are included, inequality is further reduced, but only in the long term. Around mid-century, the combination of dried-up carbon revenues and yet limited climate benefits leads to higher inequality under the Paris target than in the Reference scenario, indicating the need for further policy measures in the medium term.</p>