Prof Hong Harrison from Columbia University: seminar

Professor Harrison Hong will present a CRA seminar “Extreme-Weather Risks in a Changing Climate: Implications of Learning and Adaptation for Panel Models” on 17 November 2023 from 11 am to 12 pm at Macquarie University Business School, Seminar Room 623, Level 6, 4 Eastern Road, MQBS. The seminar can also be attended online via Zoom.

Abstract

The adverse consequences of global warming for extreme weather are uncertain. Damages should vary as society learns about them from extreme-weather arrivals and adapts. Using country-level data on tropical cyclones and temperature, we find that unexpected extreme-weather arrivals damage growth, elevate the risk of subsequent strikes, and increase costly adaptation. To fit these findings, we estimate a panel model where damage falls with Bayesian posteriors of extreme-weather arrivals. We decompose damage into a portion with adaptation fixed at priors and a correction for a change in adaptation with revision of priors. Panel-model projections of damages ignoring learning are significantly biased.

Prof. Harrison Hong bio

Harrison Hong is the John R. Eckel Jr. Professor of Financial Economics at the Columbia University Department of Economics and Executive Director of the Program for Economic Research. Before coming to Columbia in 2016, he was on the economics faculty of
Princeton University, most recently as the John Scully ’66 Professor of Economics and Finance. Prior to that, he was an associate professor of finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business from 1997- 2001. He received his B.A. in economics and statistics with highest distinction from the University of California at Berkeley in 1992 and his Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T. in 1997. In 2009, he was awarded the Fischer Black Prize, given once every two years to the best American finance economist under the age of 40. He received honorary doctorates from Stockholm School of Economics and Aalto University and is a past Director of the American Finance Association. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an academic advisor at LSV Asset Management. He has contributed to a number of areas in financial economics, including stock market efficiency, behavioral finance, and climate finance. His recent work focuses on the role of the financial system in addressing climate change. He is a co-author on the upcoming Fifth National Climate Assessment for the US Congress and an advisor on several climate risk assessments by the International Monetary
Fund.