Climate change concerns and macroeconomic condition predictability

Abstract

This study examines the aggregate and disaggregated effects of media concerns about climate change on the predictability of future macroeconomic conditions using quantile regression technique for the period from January, 2003 to August, 2022. This paper finds that media concerns about climate change increases macroeconomic uncertainty and that these effects are heterogeneous across themes and climate change-related topics as well as macroeconomic uncertainty levels. In particular, concerns about the environmental impact of climate change increases future macroeconomic uncertainty irrespective of existing level of uncertainty while that of business impact may reduce it if current uncertainty level is very low.