Jungsuk Kim

Climate change has intensified in recent years, with one of its notable consequences being an increased frequency of extreme temperature events—manifesting as both excessively hot and cold days driven by temperature anomalies. In this study, we examine how daily temperature anomalies affect the market valuation of climate-aligned firms in the United States, relative to broader market trends. Using economic valuations of 33 publicly traded U.S. firms associated with renewable energy, electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel, and other sustainability-focused sectors from 2010 to 2024, we assess the effect of temperature anomalies aggregated at the national level, weighted by population, real gross state product, and gross domestic product. Our findings reveal that temperature anomalies—whether unusually warm or cold—are associated with a same-day increase in the financial performance of environmentally friendly firms, followed by a reversal the next day. This short-lived effect is driven primarily by days when temperatures deviate from historical norms but remain within the usual comfort range. When anomalies are large enough to create extreme conditions—pushing already hot days hotter or cold days colder—the pattern reverses: returns decline on the day of the anomaly and rebound the following day. These results are robust to controls for macroeconomic conditions, including the 10-year Treasury–Federal Funds Rate spread, 3-month Treasury–Federal Funds Rate spread, and crude oil prices. Together, the findings highlight the transitory nature of climate-related investor responses and show that market reactions depend on whether temperature shocks merely depart from historical norms or push conditions into genuinely extreme territory.

COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on the elderly, who are over-represented among those who suffered severe illness or death. The obvious implication is that the share of the elderly in the population significantly affects the impact of COVID-19 on the overall health of a country. More generally, the elderly share has far-reaching economic and social ramifications. In this paper, we perform empirical analysis of cross-country data from 1970 to 2018 to identify the determinants of the share of the elderly—i.e., those aged 65 and over—in a country’s population. We find that the quality of health care, life expectancy, and female labor participation increases the elderly share while higher fertility and female education attainment lower the elderly share. In addition, we find that the share is higher for high income countries and countries in Europe and Central Asia.

The central objective of this paper is to empirically assess whether countries with better information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure suffered less GDP growth deceleration during COVID-19. The scope of this paper is to apply linear estimation to a sample of 117 economies, including 86 emerging market and developing economies and 31 advanced economies, to analyze the relationship between ICT and GDP growth deceleration during the pandemic period. Controlling for other variables that can also influence economic performance, we find empirical support for a positive impact of ICT. For a given COVID-19 infection rate, we find that economies with better internet access showed greater resilience, defined as less in terms of economic growth. The obvious policy implication is that governments should invest more in ICT infrastructure to strengthen the resilience of their economies in the face of major shocks.

The age of Southeast Asian developing countries’ populations is still younger than that of other regions around the world. However, recent statistics show that the tide is now turning in this regard, with many of these populations beginning to age at rates much faster than many other countries. Such developments require immediate policy action in order to create a sustainable path towards economic growth before demographic changes become less benign in the medium term. In this study, we discuss the economic consequences of population aging, increases in the economic support ratio, and a declining potential growth rate. We argue that it is essential for Southeast Asian developing countries to raise total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates so as to achieve more sustainable economic outcomes. By conducting panel regressions using data from 82 countries across the 1996–2019 study period, our study shows that increasing research and development (R&D) spending and the facilitation of structural changes that transform the digital economy landscape are key policy options that promote TFP growth.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a spike in financial market volatility. In this paper, we attempt to assess the effects of financial & news-driven uncertainty shocks in growing Asian economies, using country-specific bond volatility shocks as a measure of local interest rate uncertainty. Also, we contrast the effects of local uncertainty with global stock market uncertainty. Using bond market data from nine Asian markets, we uncover a transmission mechanism of uncertainty shocks via the bond market. The mechanism works as a crowding-out effect due to government-led excessive market borrowing with supply-side consequences for the private sector, as opposed to economic policy or global stock market uncertainty which works more like a demand shock as in the literature. We conclude that countries with growing fiscal deficits that entail a larger government bond market or higher current account deficits, tend to experience an increase in the cost of borrowing due to this bond market volatility or interest rate uncertainty shocks.