Africa continues to endure the negative effects of climate change, which have become increasingly visible in the agricultural sector, posing challenges to policies aimed at price stability and economic growth. Thus, this study applies the Structural Auto-regression (SVAR) model to estimate the impact of climate change on output and inflation in Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa using monthly data from 2002M01 to 2020M12. The findings reveal that a rise in climate change reduces the real output from its potential level and causes increases in food as well as general consumer prices across the countries. On the one hand, South Africa and Nigeria are estimated to have the most impact. On the other hand, Egypt's real output, food and consumer price inflation are estimated to have the least. Overall, the estimates show that climate change has the greatest impact on food price inflation, followed by general consumer price inflation, and finally real output. One key policy implication of this study's findings is that effective emission reductions that lowers climate change can boost economic growth while also reining in food and consumer price inflation. Thus, suggesting that bringing down climate change significantly can help central banks achieve price and output stability.
Purpose: The recent Russia–Ukraine conflict highlights the geopolitical importance of natural gas, especially in Europe. In this light, this study examines the impact of the Russia–Ukraine conflict on the spread of price bubbles from European natural gas to international energy prices.Design/methodology/approach: The Generalized Supremum Augmented Dickey-Fuller (GSADF) test is employed to detect the occurrence of price bubble episodes while the Dynamic Logit Model is used to examine price bubble contagion between the two markets. Further, a tri-variate VAR model is used to examine the determinants of the price bubble.Findings: The findings reveal multiple bubble episodes in both European natural gas and international energy prices. Further, evidence of bilateral contagion between European natural gas and the international energy market is found. In addition, the Russia–Ukraine conflict triggers price bubble episodes in both markets. Finally, a counterfactual analysis suggests that the conflict increases the bubble contagion from the European natural gas market to the international energy market by about 40%. These findings imply that the Russia–Ukraine conflict is a significant driver of high upside risks to bubble occurrence and subsequent contagion to both European natural gas and international energy prices.Originality/value: To the best of our knowledge, this study contributes new empirical evidence that the Russian–Ukrainian conflict significantly impacts the spread of price bubbles from the European natural gas market to international energy markets.