The Growth Effects of El Niño and La Niña: Local Weather Conditions Matter

Cécile Couharde (), Olivier Damette, Rémi Generoso and Kamiar Mohaddes

No 374, Globalization Institute Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Abstract: This paper contributes to the climate-economy literature by analyzing the role of weather patterns in influencing the transmission of global climate cycles to economic growth. More specifically, we focus on El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events and their interactions with local weather conditions, taking into account the heterogeneous and cumulative effects of weather patterns on economic growth and the asymmetry and nonlinearity in the global influence of ENSO on economic activity. Using data on 75 countries over the period 1975-2014, we provide evidence for the negative growth effects of ENSO events and show that there are substantial differences between its warm (El Niño) and cold (La Niña) phases and between climate zones. These differences are due to the heterogeneity in weather responses to ENSO events, known as teleconnections, which has so far not been taken into account by economists, and which will become more important in the climate-economy relationship given that climate change may substantially strengthen long-distance relationships between weather patterns around the world. We also show that the negative growth effects associated with these teleconnections are robust to the definition of ENSO events and more important over shorter meteorological onsets.

Keywords: Economic growth; ENSO events; weather shocks; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 O40 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2019-11-29
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/institute/wpapers/2019/0374.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Growth Effects of El Niño and La Niña: Local Weather Conditions Matter (2020)
Working Paper: The Growth Effects of El Niño and La Niña: Local Weather Conditions Matter (2020)
Working Paper: The Growth Effects of El Nino and La Nina: Local Weather Conditions Matter (2019)
Working Paper: The Growth Effects of El Niño and La Niña: Local Weather Conditions Matter (2019)
Working Paper: THE GROWTH EFFECTS OF EL NIÑO AND LA NIÑA: LOCAL WEATHER CONDITIONS MATTER (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:feddgw:374

DOI: 10.24149/gwp374

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Globalization Institute Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Amy Chapman ().