Publication
The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global vs. Local Temperature
This paper estimates that the macroeconomic damages from climate change are six times larger than previously thought. Exploiting natural global temperature variability, we find that 1掳C warming reduces world GDP by 12%. Global temperature correlates strongly with extreme climatic events, unlike country-level temperature used in previous work, explaining our larger estimate. We use this evidence to estimate damage functions in a neoclassical growth model. Business-as-usual warming implies a 25% present welfare loss and a Social Cost of Carbon of $1,367 per ton. These impacts suggest that unilateral decarbonization policy is cost-effective for large countries such as the United States.
Publication Date
November, 2024