Matthias Kalkuhl

The Impact of Climate Conditions on Economic Production. Evidence from a Global Panel of Regions

In this recent working paper, Matthias Kalkuhl analyses how temperature and precipitation levels affect GDP in the short and in the long run, using a large panel dataset on subnational GDP for over 1,400 regions in the world. He finds substantial response to temperature, particularly in tropical regions, and estimates that unmitigated global warming can reduce GDP by 9 percent on average and by 20 percent in tropical regions.

The agenda of his research stay at the CESifo institute will focus on the macroeconomic models of climate change impacts. In his research, he aims to investigate empirically how extreme weather events affect economic growth and to what extent economic spillover effects of disasters between neighbouring regions exist. He further seeks to develop equilibrium models that include public debt and fiscal policy aspects to analyse how natural disasters affect sovereign debt rating and the risk of debt crises.

Since 2015, Matthias Kalkuhl has been head of the working group Economic Growth and Human Development at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), Berlin. He is also Professor on Climate Change, Development and Economic Growth at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Potsdam. He was previously research associate at the Center for Development Research, University of Bonn, and at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He was contributing author to the IPCC’s Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and is Chapter Lead Author of UNEP Emissions Gap Report, forthcoming by the end of 2018. He is member of the advisory council “Global Economy and Social Ethics” of the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK), which recently published a report on the role of economic growth for human wellbeing.

Matthias Kalkuhl was awaded a PhD in Economics from the TU Berlin and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research for his dissertation “The Calculus of Climate Policy: Carbon Pricing and Technology Policies for Climate Change Mitigation“.