The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change on Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case for Sustainable Development
https://doi.org/10.26794/2308-944X-2021-9-1-8-36
Abstract
While climate change has harsh universal impacts, it is believed that its negative effects fall disproportionately on hotter, developing regions. This paper examines these claims using a panel datasets for 84 OECD and Sub- Saharan African countries between 1970–2018. I document both the evolution of country-specific temperatures and the long-term economic impact of temperature and precipitation variations on GDP per-capita. Using a panel auto-regressive distributed lag model on the sample mentioned above, I found that temperatures have unanimously increased for all sample-countries and that variations in temperature above historical norms significantly reduced income-growth. No significant relationship was found between precipitation and income growth. When interacting ‘poor’ and ‘hot’ country variables, I found that temperature variations disproportionately affected both hotter and poorer Sub-Saharan African countries. In OECD countries, temperatures have increased more quickly relative to their historical norms than Sub-Saharan African countries. Finally, while poorer and developing countries are more adversely affected by temperature variations, they seem to recover more quickly from temperature shocks than sample averages. I explain these results and link them to potential policy implications regarding global sustainable development and greenhouse gas abatement.
Keywords
Supporting agencies: I would like to thank the Associate Editors for helpful comments.
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For citations:
Sandalli A. The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change on Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case for Sustainable Development. Review of Business and Economics Studies. 2021;9(1):8-36. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.26794/2308-944X-2021-9-1-8-36
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