The interactions of social norms about climate change: Science, institutions and economics

Abstract

We study the evolution of interest in climate change among different actors within the population and how the interest of these actors affects one another. Our first contribution is to measure interest among the general public, the European Parliament, central banks, general interest science journals, and economics journals by creating a Climate Change Index (CCI) based on mentions of climate change in these domains. We also provide a game-theoretic network model of cross-influences between the actors in the economy. The model gives a prediction of the interactions between sectors related to the mutual interests embedded in the model parameters. We then estimate these parameters using a Vector Autoregression (VAR). The main results are that except for general interest science journals, the index for all other domains has started showing significant values only recently, and it tends to fluctuate considerably over time. In terms of influence, the European Parliament and the media affect one another, but the trend in science remains relatively independent of the others.