{"id":16313,"date":"2016-01-11T17:21:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T22:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16313"},"modified":"2016-01-11T17:21:31","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T22:21:31","slug":"extreme-weather-and-global-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16313","title":{"rendered":"Extreme Weather and Global Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Extreme Weather and Global Growth<\/a><\/h3>\n

CAMBRIDGE \u2013 Until recently, the usual thinking among macroeconomists has been that short-term weather fluctuations don\u2019t matter much for economic activity. Construction hiring may be stronger than usual in a March when the weather is unseasonably mild, but there will be payback in April and May. If heavy rains discourage people from shopping in August, they will just spend more in September.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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But recent economic research, bolstered by an exceptionally strong El Ni\u00f1o \u2013 a complex global climactic event marked by exceptionally warm Pacific Ocean water off the coast of Ecuador and Peru \u2013 has prompted a rethink of this view.<\/p>\n

Extreme weather certainly throws a ringer into key short-term macroeconomic statistics. It can add or subtract\u00a0100,000<\/a>\u00a0jobs to monthly US employment, the single most-watched economic statistic in the world, and generally thought to be one of the most accurate. The impact of El Ni\u00f1o-related weather events like the one this year (known more precisely as \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o Southern Oscillation\u201d events) can be especially large because of their global reach.<\/p>\n

Recent\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0from the International Monetary Fund suggests that countries such as Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Africa suffer adversely in El Ni\u00f1o years (often due to droughts), whereas some regions, including the United States, Canada, and Europe, can benefit. California, for example, which has been experiencing years of severe drought, is finally getting rain. Generally, but not always, El Ni\u00f1o events tend to be inflationary, in part because low crop yields lead to higher prices.<\/p>\n

After two crazy winters in Boston, where I live, it would be hard to convince people that weather doesn\u2019t matter. Last year, the city experienced the\u00a0largest snow accumulation<\/a>\u00a0on record. Eventually, there was no longer any place to put it: four-lane highways narrowed to two lanes, and two-lane roads to one. Roofs collapsed and \u201cice dams\u201d building up from gutters caused severe flooding.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Extreme Weather and Global Growth CAMBRIDGE \u2013 Until recently, the usual thinking among macroeconomists has been that short-term weather fluctuations don\u2019t matter much for economic activity. Construction hiring may be stronger than usual in a March when the weather is unseasonably mild, but there will be payback in April and May. If heavy rains discourage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[288,1357,4790,8402],"class_list":["post-16313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","tag-extreme-weather","tag-global-growth","tag-ken-rogoff","tag-project-syndicate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16314,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16313\/revisions\/16314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}