Climate Change Costs Rise as Interest Rates Fall

Michael Bauer and Glenn Rudebusch

FRBSF Economic Letter, 2021, vol. 2021, issue 28, 05

Abstract: Climate change—including higher temperatures and more extreme weather—is already causing economic damage and is projected to have further long-lasting effects. To properly assess the potential future economic losses from climate change, they must be discounted to produce comparable values in today’s dollars. The discount rates required for this assessment are influenced by the long-run equilibrium real interest rate, which has declined notably since the 1990s. Accounting for a persistently lower real rate increases the present discounted future costs of climate change, which is relevant for climate policy choices.

Keywords: climate change; interest rates; discount rates; climate policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2021-28.pdf Full text - article PDF (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:fedfel:93257

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in FRBSF Economic Letter from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library ().