Open AccessThe Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change on Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case for Sustainable Development
Author(s) -
Aydin Sandalli
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
review of business and economics studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2311-0279
pISSN - 2308-944X
DOI - 10.26794/2308-944x-2021-9-1-8-36
Subject(s) - distributed lag , climate change , economics , developing country , sample (material) , precipitation , panel data , development economics , sustainable development , greenhouse gas , per capita , per capita income , demographic economics , geography , natural resource economics , econometrics , economic growth , political science , demography , population , ecology , chemistry , chromatography , sociology , meteorology , law , biology
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.