Economic growth, natural disasters and climate change: New empirical estimates

Abstract

This paper analyzes the association between climate change variables and the incidence of intense hydro meteorological disasters within a framework that include global and local climate variables as well as socio-economic factors that aggravate disasters. We have shown that atmospheric carbon dioxide accumulation significantly increases hydro meteorological disasters and that the losses of human capital caused by such disasters induce significant negative effects on the rate of economic growth. A distinctive feature of this research is that the statistical-econometric analysis used considers all reported significant climate-related disasters during the period 1970-2013 in 184 countries, instead of focusing merely on selected disasters, periods or countries as most previous research has done.