IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed016/542.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What Do Capital Markets Tell Us About Climate Change?

Author

Listed:
  • Marcelo Ochoa

    (Federal Reserve Board of Governors)

  • Dana Kiku

    (University of Ilinois)

  • Ravi Bansal

    (Duke University)

Abstract

We use the forward-looking information from the US and global capital markets to estimate the economic impact of long-run temperature fluctuations. We find that global warming has a significant negative effect on asset valuations and that temperature risks carry a negative price. We also find that the negative elasticity of equity prices to temperature risks have been increasing over time, which suggests that the impact of climate change on the macro-economy has been rising. We use our empirical evidence to calibrate a long-run risks model with temperature-induced disasters in future output and growth and quantify the social cost of carbon emissions. The model simultaneously matches the projected temperature path, the observed consumption growth dynamics, discount rates provided by the risk-free rate and equity market returns, and the estimated temperature elasticity of equity prices. We show that a preference for early resolution of uncertainty and long-run impact of temperature on growth imply a significant social cost of carbon emissions.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcelo Ochoa & Dana Kiku & Ravi Bansal, 2016. "What Do Capital Markets Tell Us About Climate Change?," 2016 Meeting Papers 542, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  • Handle: RePEc:red:sed016:542
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2016/paper_542.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lars Peter Hansen & Thomas J Sargent, 2014. "Robust Control and Model Misspecification," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: UNCERTAINTY WITHIN ECONOMIC MODELS, chapter 6, pages 155-216, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Richard S.J. Tol, 2011. "The Social Cost of Carbon," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 419-443, October.
    3. Ravi Bansal & Marcelo Ochoa & Dana Kiku, 2016. "Climate Change and Growth Risks," NBER Working Papers 23009, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Richard Tol, 2002. "Estimates of the Damage Costs of Climate Change, Part II. Dynamic Estimates," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 21(2), pages 135-160, February.
    5. Joshua Graff Zivin & Matthew Neidell, 2014. "Temperature and the Allocation of Time: Implications for Climate Change," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 1-26.
    6. Borovička, Jaroslav & Hansen, Lars Peter, 2014. "Examining macroeconomic models through the lens of asset pricing," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 183(1), pages 67-90.
    7. Philippe Weil, 1990. "Nonexpected Utility in Macroeconomics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(1), pages 29-42.
    8. Christian Gollier, 2012. "Pricing the Planet's Future: The Economics of Discounting in an Uncertain World," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9894.
    9. Raddatz, Claudio, 2009. "The wrath of God : macroeconomic costs of natural disasters," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5039, The World Bank.
    10. William Nordhaus, 2014. "Estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon: Concepts and Results from the DICE-2013R Model and Alternative Approaches," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 000.
    11. Shanken, Jay, 1992. "On the Estimation of Beta-Pricing Models," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(1), pages 1-33.
    12. Ravi Bansal & Marcelo Ochoa, 2011. "Temperature, Aggregate Risk, and Expected Returns," NBER Working Papers 17575, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Jessica A. Wachter, 2013. "Can Time-Varying Risk of Rare Disasters Explain Aggregate Stock Market Volatility?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(3), pages 987-1035, June.
    14. Rietz, Thomas A., 1988. "The equity risk premium a solution," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 117-131, July.
    15. Robert J. Barro, 2009. "Rare Disasters, Asset Prices, and Welfare Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 243-264, March.
    16. Martin L. Weitzman, 2009. "On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 1-19, February.
    17. Garth Heutel, 2012. "How Should Environmental Policy Respond to Business Cycles? Optimal Policy under Persistent Productivity Shocks," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(2), pages 244-264, April.
    18. Pindyck, Robert S., 2012. "Uncertain outcomes and climate change policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 289-303.
    19. Ravi Jagannathan & Srikant Marakani, 2015. "Price-Dividend Ratio Factor Proxies for Long-Run Risks," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(1), pages 1-47.
    20. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    21. Richard Tol, 2002. "Estimates of the Damage Costs of Climate Change. Part 1: Benchmark Estimates," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 21(1), pages 47-73, January.
    22. Ravi Bansal & Amir Yaron, 2004. "Risks for the Long Run: A Potential Resolution of Asset Pricing Puzzles," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(4), pages 1481-1509, August.
    23. Garth Heutel, 2012. "How Should Environmental Policy Respond to Business Cycles? Optimal Policy under Persistent Productivity Shocks," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(2), pages 244-264, April.
    24. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2012. "Temperature Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 66-95, July.
    25. Fama, Eugene F & MacBeth, James D, 1973. "Risk, Return, and Equilibrium: Empirical Tests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 607-636, May-June.
    26. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    27. -, 2009. "The economics of climate change," Sede Subregional de la CEPAL para el Caribe (Estudios e Investigaciones) 38679, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Benedict Clements & Sanjeev Gupta & João Jalles & Bernat Adrogue, 2023. "Climate Change and Government Borrowing Costs: A Triple Whammy for Emerging Market Economies," Working Papers REM 2023/0295, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ravi Bansal & Dana Kiku & Marcelo Ochoa, 2016. "Price of Long-Run Temperature Shifts in Capital Markets," NBER Working Papers 22529, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Ravi Bansal & Marcelo Ochoa & Dana Kiku, 2016. "Climate Change and Growth Risks," NBER Working Papers 23009, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Kent D. Daniel & Robert B. Litterman & Gernot Wagner, 2016. "Applying Asset Pricing Theory to Calibrate the Price of Climate Risk," NBER Working Papers 22795, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    5. Hjort, Ingrid, 2016. "Potential Climate Risks in Financial Markets: A Literature Overview," Memorandum 01/2016, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    6. Harrison Hong & Neng Wang & Jinqiang Yang, 2020. "Mitigating Disaster Risks in the Age of Climate Change," NBER Working Papers 27066, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Michael Donadelli & Marcus Jüppner & Antonio Paradiso & Christian Schlag, 2021. "Computing Macro-Effects and Welfare Costs of Temperature Volatility: A Structural Approach," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 58(2), pages 347-394, August.
    8. Michael Donadelli & Marcus Jüppner & Antonio Paradiso & Christian Schlag, 2019. "Temperature Volatility Risk," Working Papers 2019:05, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    9. Christoph Hambel & Holger Kraft & Eduardo Schwartz, 2015. "Optimal Carbon Abatement in a Stochastic Equilibrium Model with Climate Change," NBER Working Papers 21044, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Christian Traeger, 2014. "Why uncertainty matters: discounting under intertemporal risk aversion and ambiguity," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(3), pages 627-664, August.
    11. Letta, Marco & Montalbano, Pierluigi & Tol, Richard S.J., 2018. "Temperature shocks, short-term growth and poverty thresholds: Evidence from rural Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 13-32.
    12. Dobes Leo & Jotzo Frank & Stern David I., 2014. "The Economics of Global Climate Change: A Historical Literature Review," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 65(3), pages 281-320, December.
    13. Stan Olijslagers & Sweder van Wijnbergen, 2019. "Discounting the Future: on Climate Change, Ambiguity Aversion and Epstein-Zin Preferences," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-030/VI, Tinbergen Institute.
    14. Lamperti, F. & Dosi, G. & Napoletano, M. & Roventini, A. & Sapio, A., 2018. "Faraway, So Close: Coupled Climate and Economic Dynamics in an Agent-based Integrated Assessment Model," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 315-339.
    15. Hambel, Christoph & Kraft, Holger & Schwartz, Eduardo S., 2019. "Optimal carbon abatement in a stochastic equilibrium model with climate change," SAFE Working Paper Series 92, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2019.
    16. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4hs7liq1f49gh9chdf7r17gam6 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Luca Gerotto & Paolo Pellizzari, 2021. "A replication of Pindyck’s willingness to pay: on the efforts required to obtain results," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(5), pages 1-25, May.
    18. Frederick Ploeg, 2021. "Carbon pricing under uncertainty," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 28(5), pages 1122-1142, October.
    19. Robert J. Barro, 2015. "Environmental Protection, Rare Disasters and Discount Rates," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 82(325), pages 1-23, January.
    20. Olijslagers, Stan & van der Ploeg, Frederick & van Wijnbergen, Sweder, 2023. "On current and future carbon prices in a risky world," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    21. Alex Schmitt, 2018. "Optimal Carbon Pricing and Income Taxation Without Commitment," ifo Working Paper Series 274, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:red:sed016:542. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.