Climate-related risks are increasingly recognised as an important threat to long-term fiscal sustainability. This column studies the extent to which credit rating agencies integrate these risks into their sovereign rating assessments. It finds that measures of physical risk lead to lower credit ratings, but the impacts are small in magnitude. Ambitious CO2 reduction targets and […]
Since 2013, synthetic opioid overdoses have surged in the US, claiming over 70,000 lives each year. This crisis has had international spillovers, reigniting drug-related violence in Mexico, where a new wave of cartel warfare erupted after 2013. This column shows that the geography of this second wave is closely tied to fentanyl trafficking routes. Exploiting […]
A growing number of urban areas around the world face water scarcity. Focusing on the prolonged drought that Cape Town experienced from 2015 to 2018, this column examines how adaptation shaped outcomes for the city’s residents and for its municipal water utility. While policy measures including higher prices and usage restrictions saved the city from […]
