Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/250635 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 14974
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Existing climate-economy models use aggregate damage functions to model the effects of climate change. This approach assumes climate change has equal impacts on the productivity of firms that produce consumption and investment goods or services. We show the split between damage to consumption and investment productivity matters for the dynamic consequences of climate change. Drawing on the structural transformation literature, we develop a framework that incorporates heterogeneous climate damages. When investment is more vulnerable to climate, we find short-run consumption losses will be smaller than leading models with aggregate damage functions suggest, but long-run consumption losses will be larger. We quantify these effects for the climate damage from heat stress and find that accounting for heterogeneous damages increases the welfare cost of climate change by approximately 4 to 24 percent, depending on the discount factor.
Subjects: 
climate change
structural transformation
growth
JEL: 
O13
O44
Q56
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
1.33 MB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.