Policy Brief published on 'Pricing Climate Risks: Evidence from Wildfires and Municipal Bonds'
This policy brief examines how financial markets are responding to anticipated climate-driven wildfire risk increases.
Combining high-resolution meteorological predictions and land use pattern maps with detailed US municipal bond data, this paper finds that municipalities facing higher future wildfire risk increases are already having to pay substantially higher borrowing costs as a result. A one standard deviation increase in future wildfire exposure is associated with a 23-basis point rise in school district bond spreads, corresponding to 42% of the sample mean. Borrowing cost impacts are significantly larger in areas with higher minority population shares and heavier reliance on local revenue sources.
The full policy brief is available as PDF Download Policy Brief Download (PDF, 1.9 MB).
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