IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecb/ecbwps/20263203.html

Heatwaves, coldwaves, floods, and droughts: the short-term impact of extreme weather events on economic activity

Author

Listed:
  • Andersson, Malin
  • Battistini, Niccolò
  • Bobasu, Alina

Abstract

This paper examines the short-term macroeconomic and sectoral effects of extreme weather events in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. We construct novel indicators of extreme temperature and precipitation based on percentile thresholds of long-run historical distributions and estimate their impact through country-specific structural Bayesian VAR models. The analysis documents sizable and heterogeneous effects on real GDP, HICP, and sectoral activity over a one-year horizon. Temperature extremes primarily affect industrial and energy-related sectors, with Germany exhibiting the strongest vulnerability to heatwaves. Precipitation extremes mainly impact construction and mining, with Spain featuring the largest exposure to floods and droughts. Sectoral composition plays a key role in shaping transmission, with pharmaceuticals, electricity, construction, and mining displaying distinct and recurrent patterns. Given their impact on prices, extreme weather event shocks may exert inflationary pressures without hurting activity, or induce demand-type of effects on the overall economy, with different effects across countries. JEL Classification: E23, E32, Q54, R11

Suggested Citation

  • Andersson, Malin & Battistini, Niccolò & Bobasu, Alina, 2026. "Heatwaves, coldwaves, floods, and droughts: the short-term impact of extreme weather events on economic activity," Working Paper Series 3203, European Central Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20263203
    Note: 427284
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ecb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/scpwps/ecb.wp3203~063779fe18.en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20263203. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Official Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/emieude.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.