Search Results
Working Paper
The Canary in the Coal Decline: Appalachian Household Finance and the Transition from Fossil Fuels
The energy transition away from fossil fuels presents significant transition risks for communities historically built around the fossil fuel industry. This paper uses the decline in the Appalachian coal industry between 2011 and 2018 to understand how individuals are harmed by a reduction in local fossil fuel extraction activity. We use individual-level credit data and exogenous variation in coal demand from the electricity sector to identify how the coal mining industry’s decline affected the finances of Appalachian households. We find that the decline in demand for coal caused broad-based ...
Discussion Paper
Transition Risks in the Fed’s Second District and the Nation
Climate change may pose two types of risk to the economy—from policies and consumer preferences as the energy system transitions to a lower dependence on carbon (in other words, transition risks) or from damages stemming from the direct impacts of climate change (physical risks). In this post, we follow up on our previous post that studied the exposure of the Federal Reserve’s Second District to physical risks by considering how transition risks affect different parts of the District and how they differentially affect the District relative to the nation. We find that, relative to other ...