Chen Zhang, the doctoral student, went to University of Bern, Switzerland to conduct research on the economic impact of climate disasters with Prof. Eric Strobl

Author:keep    Source:keep    Date:2020-06-03 Views:

  Chen Zhang, the doctoral student in center for energy and environmental policy research, Beijing institute of technology, went to the university of Bern, Switzerland, in early October 2019 for a one-year Joint-Doctoral Program. His supervisor is Professor Eric Strobl at Department of Climate and Environmental Economics, University of Bern. He has long been engaged in Environmental assessment and research on the economic impact of Climate change. In recent years, his research has focused on the use of large-scale and multi-scale satellite remote sensing data to assess the economic and social impact of extreme climate events on developing countries.

  

  His academic activities focus on assessing the economics of climate change on society. Climate change intensifies the intensity and frequency of climate disasters, and has a great negative impact on economic growth and business operations. China is one of the countries most affected by climate disasters. Due to its land area and depth in the north and south, it has diversified climate patterns, with frequent floods, typhoons and hot and cold waves. During the visit, he completed a working paper on the impact of climate disaster on the operation of Chinese enterprises under the guidance of his tutor Prof Liao and Professor Eric. Using enterprise micro level data combined with tropical cyclone path record, meteorological station data and high-dimensional remote sensing satellite data to construct a climate disasters index. The econometric model was used to identify the climate impacts mechanism and characteristics of impact and the conclusion provides empirical basis for climate disaster impact and adaptation to climate change policies.

  The results show that extreme weather events significantly reduce total factor productivity (TFP) of enterprises. Extreme weather events determine total factor productivity by reducing both capital and labor productivity. Moreover, the impact of extreme weather events will not only affect the operation performance in current year, but also affect the production efficiency of the next year. The mechanism of climate disasters on enterprises is still robust among enterprises with different ownership and production factor structure. In addition, the paper further evaluated how enterprises adapt to climate disasters. This paper has been submitted to the 25th European annual conference on environmental and resource economics (EAERE), and has been accepted by the conference for oral presentation.

  In addition, Chen also participated in the weekly Brown Bag Seminar at Department of Economics, explored the research ideas and further understood the teaching concept of empirical econometrics.