We study the impact of climate volatility on economic growth exploiting data on 133 countries between 1960 and 2005. We show that the conditional (ex ante) volatility of annual temperatures increased steadily over time, rendering climate conditions less predictable across countries, with...

The standard approach to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) holds that as a country develops and GDP per capita grows environmental degradation initially increases but eventually it reaches a turning point where environmental degradation begins to decline. Environmental degradation takes many...

This paper uses simple regression techniques to make an initial assessment of the monetary damages caused by the January 12, 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti. Damages are estimated for a disaster with both 200,000 and 250,000 total dead and missing (i.e., the range of mortality that the...

This paper explores the influence of the economic cycle on labour mobility within the EU, focusing on the likely impact of the present economic crisis. To do so, we use an econometrically calibrated simulation and a case study of Ireland. We find that, in the short run, the crisis is likely to...

The role of climate change on economic performance and output has been studied extensively in the empirical literature, however, its distributional effects have received little attention. This paper attempts to fill this gap by investigating whether climate shocks affect income inequality in a...