A0879
Title: International comparison of climate change news index with an application to monetary policy
Authors: Takuji Fueki - Hitotsubashi University (Japan)
Takeshi Shinohara - Bank of Japan (Japan)
Mototsugu Shintani - University of Tokyo (Japan) [presenting]
Abstract: A climate change news (CCN) index is constructed which measures attention to climate change risk for Japan, based on text information from newspaper articles. The index is compared with the original WSJ climate change news index for the U.S. (WSJ-CCN index), as well as other measures of macroeconomic uncertainty. It is found that the CCN index for Japan is more correlated with the WSJ-CCN index than the other macroeconomic uncertainty measures in Japan. It is also found that, for both Japan and the U.S., CCN index has significantly negative effects on economic sentiment, but has ambiguous effects on industrial production. This contrasts the fact that macroeconomic uncertainty measures have negative effects on both economic sentiment and industrial production. As an application of the CCN indexes, it is investigated if the effectiveness of monetary policy can depend on the degree of attention to climate change risks.
