Work in Progress
The Global Health Burden from Coal-fired Power Stations (with Sugandha Srivastav)
Abstract: The advent of spatially disaggregated data allows to us map where coal and gas fired power plants are located with unprecedented precision. Leveraging this data, we calculate the global health burden urban populations that live in proximity to fossil-fueled power plants. We first investigate how much of global fossil-fueled energy generation capacity is located within 25km from population centres, followed by a quantification of the people potentially exposed to the resultant pollution. Lastly, we estimate the total life years lost as a result of proximity to coal- and gas-fired power plants.
Sunlight as Security? Load-shedding and Solar Adoption (with Sugandha Srivastav)
More info coming soon.
On the Distributional Effects of Flood Risk on Access to Critical Infrastructure (with Mark Bernhofen, Diana Jaramillo Araujo, and Roosa Lambin)
More info coming soon.
Blended Finance for Nature?
Abstract: Blended Finance, the use of concessional capital to crowd in private investment, has
emerged as a new paradigm for financing sustainable development. To scrutinise the
economic rationales behind this practice in a dynamic setting, this paper develops an
inter-temporal model of loan provision and tests the implications of blending in
equilibrium. Blending provides optimal structuring of finance when the aim is to ease
a project's credit constraints before it has achieved financial maturity. However, the
benefits of blending subsequently decrease in an investment's private to public pay-
off ratio and seize to exist entirely upon reaching maturity. Projects with significant
externalities may never reach financial maturity, conditional on the extent to which
commercial investors can monetise them. In these cases, grants and interest rate
subsidies promise higher societal returns over the project's lifecycle.
The Labour Market Impacts of Green Industrial Policy in South Africa: Evidence from Job Ads (with Sam Fankhauser and Sugandha Srivastav)
More info coming soon.
Mitigating the Impact of Global Food Price Shocks: Pass-throughs and Fiscal Policy Strategies for Climate Vulnerable Countries (with Fulvia Marotta and Jasper Verschuur)
Abstract: In light of the growing climate and non-climate related pressures on the global food system, this paper addresses three related questions: To what extent do global food price shocks pass through to local markets, how are these pass-throughs conditioned by country-level idiosyncrasies, and can fiscal policy effectively support shock response and longer-term price stabilisation? We estimate global-to-local food price pass-throughs in a Bayesian VAR for most countries in the world using publicly available data sources. To further investigate cross-dependencies in vulnerable countries, our model is then extended to include multiple covariate shocks for the Sub-Saharan African sub-sample. Decomposing food price shocks over time, space, and contemporaneous oil price and harvest shocks, we construct fiscal policy counterfactuals to evaluate hypothetical coping strategies.
Exposure to Deforestation: How Robust is Statistical Inference to Choices in Land Cover Modelling? (with Stafford Nichols and Stephan Dietrich)
Abstract: Earth observation data has greatly enriched social science research, especially in contexts where data is otherwise scarce or likely to suffer from measurement error. However, social scientists may not have a good enough understanding of remote sensing techniques to avoid unforeseen side effects when using this type of data. Economists often combine gridded land cover data with survey data by reducing the former to locally centred summary statistics at the interview locations provided by the latter. The decisions taken in this reduction process can affect the resulting exposure metric and subsequent statistical inference. Using interview locations in eleven African countries from a large international survey, we calculate respondents' exposure to deforestation in 108 slightly different ways. To illustrate how this can affect inference, we model respondents' subjective well-being scores on the different versions of their exposure to local deforestation in a multi-level, linear mixed model. We find significant negative effects and insignificant effects depending on our parameter decisions. Finally, we provide guidance and strategies for social scientists to consider when employing land cover data.
Policy Briefs and Reports
-
Yang, P., Hirmer, S., and Weidinger, M. (2025). Empowering People with green Skills for Climate-Compatible Growth. Policy Brief, Climate Compatible Growth Programme.
-
Weidinger, M. and Ranger, N. (2025). Institutional Architecture and Mobilisation of Private Capital for Adaptation: The Case of Rwanda. Technical Note, Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action.
-
Weidinger, M. and Ranger, N. (2025). The Fiscal Case for Adaptation and Improved Debt Sustainability Analysis. Technical Note, Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action.
-
Ranger, N., Weidinger, M., Bernhofen, M., Burke, M., Lambin, R., Puranasamriddhi, A., Sabuco, J., and Spacey Martin, R. (2025). Enabling Adaptation: Sustainable Fiscal Policies for Climate Resilient Development and Infrastructure. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. Read Cite
-
Ranger,N., Lambin, R. Verschuur, J., Weidinger, M., Briffa, G., and Sabuco, J. (2024). Toward UK systemic resilience to international cascading climate risks: Infrastructure and Natural Capital: A primer. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford.
Dissertations
-
Weidinger, M. (2023). Does Exposure to Deforestation Affect Subjective Well-Being? Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa. Master’s Thesis in Economic and Financial Research. Read Cite
-
Weidinger, M. (2021). Child Labour in Response to Climate Change. Master’s Thesis in Public Policy and Human Development. Read Cite Code