Search

Against the background of growing concern about climate change, this study attempts to examine the impact of US climate policy uncertainty on exchange rate volatility. Specifically, this paper explores whether climate policy changes and their extreme observations, as well as the short-term asymmetry of exchange rate volatility, can help predict future exchange rate volatilities. The in-sample estimation results show that the uncertainty of US climate policy significantly affects the volatility of the US exchange rate, and extreme positive shocks of climate policy uncertainty have a greater impact on the exchange rate than extreme negative shocks of the same magnitude. In addition, we find significant asymmetries in the short-term components of exchange rate volatility, especially in the USD-CNY exchange rate and the USD-EUR exchange rate. Multiple out-of-sample forecasting tests show that models incorporating extreme values of climate policy uncertainty exhibit superior forecasting performance. Notably, the predictive performance of these models tends to be stronger during periods of low volatility and relatively weak during periods of high volatility. This paper provides valuable insights for stakeholders to make informed decisions and optimize strategies in the face of uncertain climate policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming and rare weather caused by climate change continue to affect ecosystems, human health, and economic systems, which pose serious climate risk challenges for humanity. To address and adapt to climate change risks and to facilitate the process of achieving carbon peaking and carbon-neutral targets, the financial industry has become more concerned about the information spillover effects of extreme climate events on green financial products. Therefore, this paper adopts the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) to describe climate change and investigates the influence of the SOI on the volatility of the NASDAQ OMX Green Economy Index (OMX-GEI) under a variant of the Double Asymmetric GARCH-MIDAS (DA-GM-X) model. The results show that the SOI provides relevant information for OMX-GEI volatility forecasting and the DA-GM-X model yields outstanding forecasting performance in statistical and economic terms. This conclusion indicates that considering SOI and its asymmetry changes can significantly improve the prediction accuracy of econometric models. Also, several robustness tests confirm our findings. Overall, the findings of this paper suggest that to achieve the two-carbon goal and combat climate change, governments should pay more attention to policy formulation that combines environment, climate, health, energy, and economy, and actively promote green, low-carbon, and sustainable energy development globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and the resulting extreme weather events bring significant economic losses and many unstable factors. It is an important means to actively seek environmental protection and climate governance countermeasures to meet severe challenges. As an environmental protection tool widely used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), environmental taxes are expected to play an important role in combating climate change and reducing extreme weather events. Based on public goods theory, collective cooperation theory, externality theory and double dividend theory of environmental taxes, this paper takes 36 OECD countries as research samples and empirically tests the role of environmental taxes in mitigating climate change process and reducing extreme weather events through the establishment of panel Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The empirical results show that the environmental taxes on the whole is conducive to reducing the frequency of abnormal temperature weather and plays a positive role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions in OECD countries. Further research shows that environmental budget and environmental technologies play a positive role in the process of environmental taxes to delay climate change and reduce extreme weather events. In other words, we should attach importance to the investment of environmental protection funds and the research and development of environmental protection technology while carrying out environmental taxes. The robustness test shows that the main regression results of this paper have strong robustness. The research in this paper enriches theories and existing literature related to environmental taxes and climate change, and provides new research ideas and policy guidance for delaying the process of climate change and responding to extreme weather events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of climate change, innovative financing solutions and the rapid development of financial technology (fintech) offer great potential for the growth of renewable energy. Based on panel data from 30 provinces in China, this paper explores the impact of fintech on renewable energy growth by employing the instrumental variable-generalized method of moments (IV-GMM). We also pay attention to the nexus between fintech and renewable energy growth at different quantiles. This paper also explores the moderating role of the digital economy and the mediating role of green technological innovation. The main results indicate that (1) fintech positively affects renewable energy growth in China; (2) the positive effect between fintech and renewable energy is stronger in provinces with lower levels of renewable energy growth; (3) the digital economy, on the one hand, can significantly accelerate renewable energy growth; on the other hand, under the help of the digital economy, fintech can play a more effective role in increasing renewable energy growth; and (4) fintech indirectly promotes renewable energy growth by increasing the level of green technology innovation. The findings provide meaningful references for governments and policymakers and encourage the accelerated adoption of fintech in the sustainable energy sectors. • The role of financial technologies "fintech" on renewable energy growth is explored. • Fintech successfully stimulates the development of renewable energy. • The impact of fintech on renewable energy growth is asymmetric. • Digital economy facilitates the positive role of fintech in increasing renewable energy growth. • Green technology innovation is the path through which fintech affects renewable energy growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhancing rice production efficiency in developing countries is important to improve the livelihoods of farmers and to ensure global food security for a growing population. Despite significant progress in recent decades, rice production is facing multiple challenges from climate change to the increasing competition for land, labor and capital from urbanization and industrialization. Given the fact that Vietnamese farmers often suffer from shocks and financial capital constraints, our paper aims to (i) investigate the impact of credit and shocks on rice production efficiency, and to (ii) examine the role of credit in mitigating the impact of shocks. Our findings show that weather shocks and land fragmentation are major sources of the inefficiency. Meanwhile, livestock, farm mechanization, and education are factors promoting rice production efficiency. Our results also show that access to credit plays a significant role in mitigating the negative impact of weather shocks. Our paper calls for more assistance and support to farmers in mitigating the severe effects of weather shocks, in particular via the promotion of rural credit markets. In addition, the encouragement of farm mechanization, land defragmentation, livestock farming, and the improvement of rural education should be given high priority to improve rice production efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the viability of environmental taxes as a means to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions within the European Union (EU) using the panel threshold model on two balanced panel data comprising countries from the European Union: the Northern and Western countries and Southern and Eastern countries for the period 2000–2020. The study's empirical results support the Pigouvian theory for developed countries, as they indicate an optimal minimum threshold for environmental taxes, where these taxes effectively contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the results diverge for emerging countries, revealing a maximum threshold for environmental taxes beyond which their impact in curbing emissions diminishes. To achieve the ambitious goal of climate neutrality, policymakers must adopt a comprehensive and diversified approach. This includes a combination of environmental taxes, more stringent regulations, and emission standards for industries. Additionally, the implementation of carbon pricing mechanisms, promotion of investments in sustainable fuels and technologies, and the establishment of low-carbon emission infrastructure are essential components of this strategy. By integrating these various measures, policymakers can better navigate the path toward climate neutrality and effectively combat climate change in the EU and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions and climate change risk have become constraints on global economic sustainable development. Environmental regulation (ER) is a key method for achieving synergy in CO 2 and pollution reduction in China. This paper is the first study to explore the effects of ER on CO 2 emissions by exploiting the National Environmental Protection 11th Five-Year Plan (NEP11-FYP). The implementation of the NEP11-FYP significantly decreases CO 2 emissions by 19.73% in key environmental cities relative to other cities. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that this negative impact is larger in western cities and cities with more pressure to reduce CO 2 emissions. Scale effects, structural effects, and technical effects might be three potential influencing channels through which ER contributes to the CO 2 reduction effect. In addition, the results of the spatial externality of the NEP11-FYP demonstrate a positive spillover effect in neighboring cities within a distance of 300 km and a negative spillover effect in cities more than 500 km away. Our empirical findings provide policy implications for implementing low-carbon transition strategies and reducing CO 2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of extreme precipitation on Chinese industrial output and its total factor productivity (TFP) using data from the annual survey of industrial firms (ASIF) and daily weather data. The findings demonstrate a significant reduction in industrial firm output as a result of precipitation, with extreme daily precipitation decreasing output by approximately 1.22%. We provide an explanation for this precipitation-industrial output relationship from four perspectives: per capita wages, labor productivity, inventory, and depreciation. The effects of extreme precipitation are more pronounced in high-income and high-precipitation regions, as well as among foreign firms and low-technology firms. Our research suggests that extreme daily precipitation poses a serious obstacle to the development of the manufacturing industry. These results are crucial for understanding the economic impact and concealed costs of climate change, highlighting that extreme precipitation should be recognized as one of the primary sources of damage associated with climate change in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change induced by carbon emissions has received extensive global attention. However, with the ever-increasing environmental attention from governments, whether firms, as main contributors to carbon emissions, have responded to the government's call to achieve carbon abatement target is uncertain. To answer this question, we manually collected urban government work reports from 2007-2016 and extracted environment-related textual content to quantify government environmental attention (GEA). Employing firms' carbon emission data from National Tax Survey Database (NTSD), this paper explores the impact of GEA on firms' carbon emissions governance. We observe that the increase in GEA cuts firms' carbon emissions. The results remain solid after using the instrumental variable method to alleviate endogeneity problems. The mechanism analysis reveals that GEA reduces firms' carbon emissions via three environmental-related decision-making behaviors of government: environmental regulations, fiscal expenditure and subsidy policies, and energy structure transformation strategies. Heterogeneity analysis shows that GEA notably reduces firms' carbon emissions from burning coal and oil energy. Moreover, firms in eastern-north, central, and western regions are more susceptible to GEA, while the impact is insignificant for firms in eastern regions. Furthermore, the carbon reduction performance is more pronounced for enterprises in capital-intensive, technology-intensive, and high polluting industries. This study provides a reference for policymakers to ensure the enforcement of carbon emissions governance of firms and to reach carbon abatement targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralization has always been considered the reason local governments in China lack incentives for green development. Whether conferring honorary titles can motivate the competition mode of local governments to shift to low-carbon sustainable development is a scientific problem worth studying. In this paper, the civilized city policy is taken as a quasi-experiment, and its effect is evaluated using the method of difference-in-differences. The results show that civilized city policy can effectively promote the improvement of green total factor carbon efficiency. The mechanism is that the policy encourages local governments to mobilize multiple actors to participate in green development practices including strengthening local governments' environmental control, promoting the technological innovation of enterprises, and increasing public participation in environmental affairs. Heterogeneity analysis of local government incentives shows that the civilized city policy is more effective in cities where local officials are less than 54 years old and the city GDP growth rate is midstream in the province. The study confirms that awarding honorary titles to cities in China can effectively guide local governments toward a sustainable development model and provides new ideas for other countries in the world to use local policies to address global climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the extent to which individual migration decisions in Vietnam can be driven by climate change, based on the historical rainfall data from 70 weather stations in Vietnam and the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey. Utilizing the exogenous variation in the rainfall deviation from the local norms within an individual fixed-effects framework, we uncover the negative association between rainfall and the probability of individual's decision to migrate. We find that doubling the amount of precipitation relative to the long-run local average reduces the probability of migration by 7.5 percent. This result could potentially be driven by individuals who work in the agriculture sector and could have experienced an increase in income as high precipitation could lead to high yield. Furthermore, our heterogeneity analyses suggest rainfall shocks could perpetuate gender inequality in Vietnam as women are less likely to migrate when being affected by climate change. Policymakers could shift their focus to flood control and water management in affected areas, where people's livelihoods depend on agriculture, to efficiently address issues related to climate-induced internal migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are still many uncertainties regarding the possible influences of global climate change in the mid-latitude regions, owing to rather limited research and lack of empirical evidence. This paper systematically evaluates the economic impact of climate variation by constructing a 27-year panel dataset of 274 prefecture cities and 816 weather stations in China. Our results document some significant climate–economic relationships, with the increase of 1 °C-temperature, 100 mm-rainfall, and 1%-humidity associated with a 0.78% decrease, 0.86% increase and 1.34% decrease in output, respectively. Higher temperature damages are reflected in less-developed regions, while the positive impact of rainfall mainly appear in more-developed regions. Using integrated assessment models, we project that the model-average climate damage of China may account for up to 4.23 percent of GDP by 2100, based on a nonlinear historical climate–economic interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In environmental valuation, the issue of the temporal stability of stated preferences to changes in environmental (dis)amenities is important because their results can be employed to inform decision-making. This includes cost–benefit analysis for large infrastructure projects such as coastal protection. A couple of studies have investigated stability of stated preferences over varying time periods. However, less evidence is available for temporal stability of stated preferences for (dis)amenities in uncertain times, i.e., times that are characterized by larger degrees of uncertainty regarding the (near) future. Using a choice experiment on coastal adaptation to climate change, this paper examines the test–retest reliability of individual preferences and resulting welfare estimates over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. We do so by surveying the same respondents at two points in time five months apart during the ongoing pandemic. Using a latent class model, we find similar preference heterogeneity patterns but different class sizes. While the welfare measure of an adaptation scenario that focuses on safety increases across survey waves, scenarios that centre on recreation or nature have decreasing welfare effects. This suggests that individuals set other priorities in uncertain times. • We study temporal stability of stated preferences during the COVID-19 pandemic. • We record preferences for coastal adaptation to climate change at the Baltic Sea. • We find similar preference heterogeneity patterns for both survey waves. • In the second wave, however, more respondents focus on the heightening of dykes. • Overall, results point to an increased valuation of safety during uncertain times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]