Capital markets and the costs of climate policies

Globalization is accompanied by increasing current account imbalances. They can undermine the positive impacts of increasing international cooperation and trade on economic growth and income convergence. At the same time, climate change challenges the global community and requests for co-operative action. Regional energy transformation due to climate policies and the resulting regional mitigation costs are key variables of climate economic analysis. This study is the first that include current account imbalances and imperfect capital markets to investigate potential market feedback mechanisms between climate policies, energy sector transformation and capital markets. Furthermore, it answers the question whether the capital-intensive transformation towards zero-carbon economies increases the policy cost of mitigation under the condition of imperfect capital markets. First results demonstrate a dominant baseline effect of capital market imperfections on macroeconomic variables, and moderate effects on mitigation costs in global climate policy scenarios. For some regions (e.g. Middle East) estimates of relatively high mitigation costs are revised downwards, if imperfect capital markets are considered.

Macroeconomic Policy Making and Current Account Imbalances in the Euro Area

The paper analyses the role of fiscal and monetary policy for the development of the current account imbalances in the euro area, including the most recent developments during the coronavirus crisis. Several financial transmission channels such as international bank lending, changes in TARGET2 balances, international rescue credit and government bond purchases of euro area central banks are identified. It is found that differing fiscal policy stances which have interacted differently with the ECB’s monetary policy have been at roots of first diverging and then converging current account positions in the euro area. Since the European financial and debt crisis, public financing mechanisms and the unconventional monetary of the ECB have contributed to the persistence of intra-euro area current account imbalances.

Unemployment and Current Account Imbalances in Nigeria

This study explores the link that exists between unemployment and current account imbalances in Nigeria from 1980 to 2014. It adopted the ARDL bounds test approach. The result gave evidence for a long-run relationship between the variables and also revealed a significant and inverse relationship between current account surplus and unemployment. Showing that a 1% increase in current account balances in favour of export will lead to a drop in the unemployment rate by 0.117893%. This, therefore, implies that current account deficit will cause a fall in employment and in turn a rise in the unemployment rate. Consequently, current account deficit leads to wage differentials in favour of the exporting countries as against importing countries, like Nigeria, and as such triggers a high rate of unemployment. We strongly recommend diversification of the country’s export-base which may increase employment opportunities and in turn reduce the unemployment rate. Keywords: Unemployment, Employment, Current Account Balances, Balance of payment, Output growth