Economic Growth Impacts of Climate Change (ENGAGE)

Tasks

The IPCC 5th Assessment Report reveals large knowledge gaps regarding the socio-economic impact of climate change, especially changes in economic growth. This prevents the integrated assessment of impacts, mitigation and adaptation. ENGAGE aims to move towards closing these gaps by (a) developing a sound conceptual and empirical understanding of the channels through which climate impacts affect growth, (b) estimating economic damages from selected impacts in a changing climate and socio-economic environment, particularly with regard to long-term growth effects, (c) exploring how the inclusion of growth effects changes the integrated assessment of selected impacts and mitigation strategies. This comprehensive approach will contribute to the next generation of integrated assessments for climate policy advice.

ENGAGE addresses three challenges: a) to develop a sound theoretical understanding and empirical quantification of the channels through which climate impacts may affect long-term growth and development patterns b) to develop new approaches for a bottom-up economic valuation of biophysical impacts bridging the gap between impact and economic models c) the integration of impacts and mitigation in a global dynamic growth framework.

Methods

Ifo conducts econometric analyses of the impact of natural hazards on economic out-comes to explore potential meachanisms at the hazard/growth nexus.

Since most existing studies use outcome-based disaster data, which suffer severe report-ing, endogeneity, and aggregation issues, Ifo is building a new database of geological and meteorological events comprising exogenous data on physical intensities collected from primary sources, geographically disaggregated at country, region, and grid cell level.

Data and other Sources

Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS),
Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program,
WMO International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS),
NOAA Global Summary of the Day (GSOD),
NOAA GHCN_CAMS Gridded 2m Temperature,
Hydrological Data by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia,
SEDAC Gridded Population of the World (GPW)
Global DMSP-OLS Nighttime Lights Time Series
Economic Data from various Sources (World Bank, OECD, UN,…)