{"title":"Climate Disasters and Exchange Rates: Are Beliefs Keeping up with Climate Change?","authors":"Galina Hale","doi":"10.1057/s41308-023-00231-w","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>There is clear scientific evidence of the shift in the probability distribution of climate-related disasters in recent decades. Is this shift reflected in the behavior of forward-looking measures of economic activity such as real exchange rates? I evaluate the role of different belief formation assumptions on the ability of the model to predict the response of real exchange rates to climate-related disasters. I consider Bayesian and backward-looking belief updates as well as static beliefs with no update or a one-time update. To do so, I construct a version of the Farhi-Gabaix (2015) framework augmented with explicit belief formation. I use two approaches to model calibration and simulate the model for 47 countries for 1964–2019 using actual data for climate-related disasters. I find that in general differences in belief formation do not have much effect on the model fit because the productivity loss component dominates the predicted response. Specifically, I find that even in recent years there is no evidence of Bayesian beliefs being a better fit for the data.</p>","PeriodicalId":47177,"journal":{"name":"Imf Economic Review","volume":"67 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Imf Economic Review","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s41308-023-00231-w","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
There is clear scientific evidence of the shift in the probability distribution of climate-related disasters in recent decades. Is this shift reflected in the behavior of forward-looking measures of economic activity such as real exchange rates? I evaluate the role of different belief formation assumptions on the ability of the model to predict the response of real exchange rates to climate-related disasters. I consider Bayesian and backward-looking belief updates as well as static beliefs with no update or a one-time update. To do so, I construct a version of the Farhi-Gabaix (2015) framework augmented with explicit belief formation. I use two approaches to model calibration and simulate the model for 47 countries for 1964–2019 using actual data for climate-related disasters. I find that in general differences in belief formation do not have much effect on the model fit because the productivity loss component dominates the predicted response. Specifically, I find that even in recent years there is no evidence of Bayesian beliefs being a better fit for the data.
期刊介绍:
The IMF Economic Review is the official research journal of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is dedicated to publishing peer-reviewed, high-quality, context-related academic research on open-economy macroeconomics. It emphasizes rigorous analysis with an empirical orientation that is of interest to a broad audience, including academics and policymakers. Studies that borrow from, and interact with, other fields such as finance, international trade, political economy, labor, economic history or development are also welcome.
The views presented in published papers are those of the authors and should not be attributed to, or reported as, reflecting the position of the IMF, its Executive Board, or any other organization mentioned herein.
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