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Shocking concerns: public perception about climate change and the macroeconomy

Giovanni Angelini, Maria Elena Bontempi, Luca De Angelis, Paolo Neri, Marco Maria Sorge

arXiv 7 May 2025 · General Economics · 1 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2505.04669 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Public perceptions of climate change arguably contribute to shaping private adaptation and support for policy intervention. In this paper, we propose a novel Climate Concern Index (CCI), based on disaggregated web-search volumes related to climate change topics, to gauge the intensity and dynamic evolution of collective climate perceptions, and evaluate its impacts on the business cycle. Using data from the United States over the 2004:2024 span, we capture widespread shifts in perceived climate-related risks, particularly those consistent with the postcognitive interpretation of affective responses to extreme climate events. To assess the aggregate implications of evolving public concerns about the climate, we estimate a proxy-SVAR model and find that exogenous variation in the CCI entails a statistically significant drop in both employment and private consumption and a persistent surge in stock market volatility, while core inflation remains largely unaffected. These results suggest that, even in the absence of direct physical risks, heightened concerns for climate-related phenomena can trigger behavioral adaptation with nontrivial consequences for the macroeconomy, thereby demanding attention from institutional players in the macro-financial field.

Citation extraction

38
references
123
in-text mentions
38
distinct cited
3
self-citations
8,416
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 93% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Ardia, D., K. Bluteau, K. Boudt, and K. Inghelbrecht (2023) Climate change concerns and the performance of green vs. brown stocks0.874162100%
2Faccini, R., R. Matin, and G. Skiadopoulos (2023) Dissecting climate risks: Are they reflected in stock prices?0.874152100%
3Gavriilidis, K (2021) Measuring climate policy uncertainty0.874152100%
4Arteaga-Garavito, M. J., R. Colacito, M. M. Croce, and B. Yang (2024) International climate news0.87482100%
5Engle, R. F., S. Giglio, B. Kelly, H. Lee, and J. Stroebel (2020) Hedging climate change news0.87482100%
6Santi, C (2023) Investor climate sentiment and financial markets0.87482100%
7Noailly, J., L. Nowzohour, and M. van den Heuvel (2022) Does environmental policy uncertainty hinder investments towards a low-carbon economy?0.87472100%
8Bua, G., D. Kapp, F. Ramella, and L. Rognone (2024) Transition versus physical climate risk pricing in european financial markets: a text- based approach0.81142100%
9Angelini, G. and L. Fanelli (2019) Exogenous uncertainty and the identification of structural vector autoregressions with external instruments self0.73732100%
10Bontempi, M. E., M. Frigeri, R. Golinelli, and M. Squadrani (2021) Eurq: A new web search-based uncertainty index self0.73732100%

Showing the top 10 of 38 scored citations.