Narrow Your Choices

Refine By Type

Refine By Countries

Refine By Topic

Refine By Series

Refine By Language

Refine By Date

—

Refine By IMF Taxonomy

Refine By JEL Taxonomy

Refine by LOC Taxonomy

Refine By THEMA Taxonomy

  • Print
  • Save

Browse

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 48 items for :

  • Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth x
Clear All
Cover IMF Working Papers
Weather Shocks and Exchange Rate Flexibility
Selim Elekdag and Maxwell Tuuli
This paper assesses the stabilization properties of fixed versus flexible exchange rate regimes and aims to answer this research question: Does greater exchange rate flexibility help an economy’s adjustment to weather shocks? To address this question, the impact of weather shocks on real per capita GDP growth is quantified under the two alternative exchange rate regimes. We find that although weather shocks are generally detrimental to per capita income growth, the impact is less severe under flexible exchange rate regimes. Moreover, the medium-term adverse growth impact of a 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature under a pegged regime is about –1.4 percentage points on average, while under a flexible regime, the impact is less than one half that amount (–0.6 percentage point). This finding bolsters the idea that exchange rate flexibility not only helps mitigate the initial impact of the shock but also promotes a faster recovery. In terms of mechanisms, our findings suggest that the depreciation of the nominal exchange rate under a flexible regime supports real export growth. In contrast to standard theoretical predictions, we find that countercyclical fiscal policy may not be effective under pegged regimes amid high debt, highlighting the importance of the policy mix and precautionary (fiscal) buffers.
Keywords:
Exchange rate regimes; Economic growth; Climate change
Cover IMF Working Papers
Creative Destruction During Crises - An Opportunity for a Cleaner Energy Mix
Mr. Pragyan Deb, Davide Furceri, Mr. Jonathan David Ostry, and Nour Tawk
Lockdowns resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have reduced overall energy demand but electricity generation from renewable sources has been resilient. While this partly reflects the trend increase in renewables, the empirical analysis presented in this paper highlights that recessions result in a permanent, albeit small, increase in energy efficiency and in the share of renewables in total electricity. These effects are stronger in the case of advanced economies and when complemented with environment and energy policies—both market-based measures such as taxes on pollutants, trading schemes and feed-in-tariffs, as well as non-market measures such as emission and fuel standards and R&D investment and subsidies—to incentivize and hasten the transition towards renewable sources of energy.
Keywords:
Covid-19 lockdowns; recession; energy use; energy mix; renewables.; environmental protection stringency; energy demand; electricity generation; impact of recession; recession result; Renewable energy; Economic recession; Environmental policy; Electricity; Non-renewable resources; Global
Cover IMF Climate Notes
Strengthening the Climate Information Architecture
Caio Ferreira, Mr. David L Rozumek, Mr. Ranjit Singh, and Felix Suntheim
Strengthening the climate information architecture is paramount to promote transparency and global comparability of data and thus improve market confidence, safeguard financial stability, and foster sustainable finance. This note provides a conceptual framework around the provision of climate-related information, discusses the progress made to date, and points toward the way forward. Progress and convergence are required on the three buildings blocks of a climate information architecture: (1) high-quality, reliable, and comparable data; (2) a globally harmonized and consistent set of climate disclosure standards; and (3) a globally agreed upon set of principles for climate finance taxonomies. A decisive, globally coordinated effort is needed to move forward on all three fronts.
Keywords:
Climate change, data, disclosure, taxonomies; IMF staff climate note; climate information architecture; IMF staff climate NOTE 2021/003; disclosure standard; market confidence; Climate change; Climate finance; Environmental sustainability; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Revisiting Carbon Leakage
Florian Misch and Mr. Philippe Wingender
This paper estimates the carbon leakage rate across countries, arguably a key parameter in the international climate policy discussion including on border carbon adjustment, but which remains subject to significant uncertainty. We propose innovations along two lines. First, we exploit recently published data on sector-country-specific changes in energy prices to identify changes in domestic carbon emissions and other flows (rather than the historically limited variation in carbon prices or adherence to international climate agreements). Second, we present a simple accounting framework to derive carbon leakage rates from reduced-form regressions in contrast to existing papers, thereby making our results directly comparable to model-based estimates of carbon leakage. We show that carbon leakage rates differ across countries and could be larger than what existing estimates suggest.
Keywords:
carbon leakage, CO2 content of trade, emission spillovers, competitiveness; carbon leakage; leakage rate; carbon flow; emission constraint; price data; Energy pricing; Energy prices; Greenhouse gas emissions; Consumption; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
How Green are Green Debt Issuers?
Jochen Schmittmann
Green debt markets are rapidly growing while product design and standards are evolving. Many policymakers and investors view green debt as an important component in the policy mix to achieve the transition to a low carbon economy and ensure the pricing of climate risks. Our analysis contributes to the nascent literature on the environmental impact of green debt by documenting the CO2 emission intensity of corporate green debt issuers. We find lower emission intensities for green bond issuers relative to other firms, but no difference for green loan and sustainability-linked loan borrowers. Green bond, green loan, and sustainability-linked loan borrowers lower their emission intensity over time at a faster rate than other firms.
Keywords:
debt issuer; bond issuer; loan borrower; debt data; emission intensity; Climate finance; Greenhouse gas emissions; Climate change; Bonds; Global
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Singapore: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept

Policymakers, investors, and firms in Singapore have started to act on climate change risks, including the mainstreaming of green financial solutions. There are increasing efforts by both regulators and market participants to integrate climate considerations in risk assessments, financing decisions and disclosure practices. While the green finance market is still modest in absolute value, it is growing fast with Singapore accounting for about half of cumulative ASEAN green debt issuances.

Keywords:
green finance market; Singapore asset manager signatory; green bond issuance; MAS-convened Green Finance Industry Taskforce; support market liquidity; Environmental sustainability; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Feeling the Heat: Climate Shocks and Credit Ratings
Mr. Serhan Cevik and João Tovar Jalles
Climate change is an existential threat to the world economy like no other, with complex, evolving and nonlinear dynamics that remain a source of great uncertainty. There is a bourgeoning literature on the economic impact of climate change, but research on how climate change affects sovereign risks is limited. Building on our previous research focusing on the impact of climate change on sovereign risks, this paper empirically investigates how climate change may affect sovereign credit ratings. By means of binary-choice models, we find that climate change vulnerability has adverse effects on sovereign credit ratings, after controlling for conventional macroeconomic determinants of credit worthiness. On the other hand, with regards to climate change resilience, we find that countries with greater climate change resilience benefit from higher (better) credit ratings. These findings, robust to a battery of sensitivity checks, also show that impact of climate change is disproportionately greater in developing countries due largely to weaker capacity to adapt to and mitigate the consequences of climate change.
Keywords:
vulnerability; resilience; credit ratings; WP; climate change vulnerability; climate change resilience; sovereign credit ratings; climate change pay; climate change variable; Climate change; climate change indices; South Asia; South America; Sub-Saharan Africa
Cover IMF Working Papers
The Effects of Weather Shocks on Economic Activity: What are the Channels of Impact?
Mr. Sebastian Acevedo Mejia, Mr. Mico Mrkaic, Natalija Novta, Evgenia Pugacheva, and Petia Topalova
Global temperatures have increased at an unprecedented pace in the past 40 years. This paper finds that increases in temperature have uneven macroeconomic effects, with adverse consequences concentrated in countries with hot climates, such as most low-income countries. In these countries, a rise in temperature lowers per capita output, in both the short and medium term, through a wide array of channels: reduced agricultural output, suppressed productivity of workers exposed to heat, slower investment, and poorer health. In an unmitigated climate change scenario, and under very conservative assumptions, model simulations suggest the projected rise in temperature would imply a loss of around 9 percent of output for a representative low-income country by 2100.
Keywords:
WP; economic activity; dependent variable; Climate change; Environoment and growth; Climate policy; temperature increase; developing country; temperature shock; productivity effect; infant mortality; Public expenditure review; Emerging and frontier financial markets; Productivity; Global