What Do Financial Markets Reveal About Global Warming?

Financial market information can provide an objective assessment of expected losses due to global warming. In a Merton-type asset pricing model, with asset prices affected by changes in investment opportunities caused by global warming, the risk premium is significantly negative and growing over time, loadings for most assets are negative, and asset portfolios in more vulnerable industries have stronger negative loadings on the global warming factor. Required returns are 0.11 percent higher due to global warming, implying a present value loss of 4.18 percent of wealth. These costs complement and exceed previous estimates of the cost of global warming.