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Political Science > Environmental Policy

You are looking at 1 - 4 of 4 items for :

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Cover IMF Working Papers
Climate Policies and External Adjustment
Rudolfs Bems, Luciana Juvenal, Weifeng Liu, and Warwick J. McKibbin
This paper assesses the economic effects of climate policies on different regions and countries with a focus on external adjustment. The paper finds that various climate policies could have substantially different impacts on external balances over the next decade. A credible and globally coordinated carbon tax would decrease current account balances in greener advanced economies and increase current accounts in more fossil-fuel-dependent regions, reflecting a disproportionate decline in investment for the latter group. Green supply-side policies—green subsidy and infrastructure investment—would increase investment and saving but would have a more muted external sector impact because of the constrained pace of expansion for renewables or the symmetry of the infrastructure boost. Country characteristics, such as initial carbon intensity and net fossil fuel exports, ultimately determine the current account responses. For the global economy, a coordinated climate change mitigation policy package would shift capital towards advanced economies. Following an initial rise, the global interest rates would fall over time with increases in the carbon tax. These external sector effects, however, depend crucially on the degree of international policy coordination and credibility.
Keywords:
Global climate policies; carbon tax; net-zero emissions; current account balances; international capital flows; dynamic general equilibrium modelling; G-Cubed; climate change mitigation policy package; current account response; IMF working paper 24/162; infrastructure investment; investment response; Current account; Greenhouse gas emissions; Productivity; Global; Europe
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Spain: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This Selected Issues paper focuses on labor productivity dynamics in Spain. Labor productivity has been a long-standing structural challenge in Spain. Productivity performance has been weak across several dimensions: labor productivity levels are significantly lower than in some peer economies, its growth rate has been low and not favored convergence, and differences in output per hour worked across Spanish regions is considerable. In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, labor productivity in Spain exhibited a counter-cyclical pattern driven by the large reduction in employment. Total factor productivity (TFP) has been consistently low and lagging peers for decades. Sustained policy focus on raising productivity will be important to increase living standards, help rebuild fiscal buffers and make growth more inclusive. The empirical analysis benefits from the rich information in firm financial statements to provide a deep-dive study on differences across firms based on their size and age. Firm-level characteristics, such as balance sheet health and growth potentials, have also shown to be significant determinants for firm investment.
Keywords:
labor productivity dynamics; Policy recommendation; green policies in Spain; carbon pricing; support measure; Climate finance; Total factor productivity; Labor productivity; Employment; Europe; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Why U.S. Immigration Matters for the Global Advancement of Science
Ruchir Agarwal, Patrick Gaulé, and Geoff Smith
This paper studies the impact of U.S. immigration barriers on global knowledge production. We present four key findings. First, among Nobel Prize winners and Fields Medalists, migrants to the U.S. play a central role in the global knowledge network—representing 20-33% of the frontier knowledge producers. Second, using novel survey data and hand-curated life-histories of International Math Olympiad (IMO) medalists, we show that migrants to the U.S. are up to six times more productive than migrants to other countries—even after accounting for talent during one’s teenage years. Third, financing costs are a key factor preventing foreign talent from migrating abroad to pursue their dream careers, particularly for talent from developing countries. Fourth, certain ‘push’ incentives that reduce immigration barriers—by addressing financing constraints for top foreign talent—could increase the global scientific output of future cohorts by 42 percent. We concludeby discussing policy options for the U.S. and the global scientific community.
Keywords:
Immigration; Science; Talent; Universities; WP; IMO medalist; migrants to the U.S.; IMO participant; productivity regression; IMO point; Migration; Productivity; Income; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Long-Term Macroeconomic Effects of Climate Change: A Cross-Country Analysis
Matthew E. Kahn, Mr. Kamiar Mohaddes, Ryan N. C. Ng, M. Hashem Pesaran, Mr. Mehdi Raissi, and Jui-Chung Yang
We study the long-term impact of climate change on economic activity across countries, using a stochastic growth model where labor productivity is affected by country-specific climate variables—defined as deviations of temperature and precipitation from their historical norms. Using a panel data set of 174 countries over the years 1960 to 2014, we find that per-capita real output growth is adversely affected by persistent changes in the temperature above or below its historical norm, but we do not obtain any statistically significant effects for changes in precipitation. Our counterfactual analysis suggests that a persistent increase in average global temperature by 0.04°C per year, in the absence of mitigation policies, reduces world real GDP per capita by more than 7 percent by 2100. On the other hand, abiding by the Paris Agreement, thereby limiting the temperature increase to 0.01°C per annum, reduces the loss substantially to about 1 percent. These effects vary significantly across countries depending on the pace of temperature increases and variability of climate conditions. We also provide supplementary evidence using data on a sample of 48 U.S. states between 1963 and 2016, and show that climate change has a long-lasting adverse impact on real output in various states and economic sectors, and on labor productivity and employment.
Keywords:
WP; math display; Climate change; economic growth; adaptation; counterfactual analysis; climate variable; effects of climate change; growth-climate change equation; climate variability; growth model; HPJ-FE estimate; country climate-economy variation; weather conditions; climate change adaptation; Production growth; Public expenditure review; Climate policy; Global