Seminar Bologna Environmental Economics Group

1)

Speaker: Sinem Ayhan (Middle East Technical University, Marie Curie COFUND fellow)

Title: The Cost of Job Loss for Coal Miners in Turkey

Co-authors: Hartmut F. Lehmann (New Uzbekistan University)

Abstract: Amid global efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions, many coal-reliant nations are setting phase-out targets. While a rapid coal transition is vital for climate goals, it poses significant welfare challenges, especially regarding employment and income losses in the coal sector. Understanding these economic impacts is crucial for designing policies that support a ‘just transition’. This paper estimates the costs of job displacement for coal miners in Turkey. To get close to the true costs of a coal shutdown, our main focus is on those displaced workers in the coal sector who find re-employment in other sectors. Using administrative linked employer-employee panel data and an event study model with fixed effects and propensity score matching, we analyze wage dynamics before, during, and after displacement. Conditional on re-employment after exiting a coal job, our findings reveal a 25% drop in real monthly wages in the first quarter after displacement —equivalent to one quarter of average pre-displacement wages and about 40% of the average monthly minimum wage— and a 15% decline in daily wages. The smaller drop in daily wages indicates that fewer working days or reduced employment stability contribute significantly to income losses. While some earnings recovery occurs within the first year, losses persist over the six-year post-displacement period. We also look at the cost of job loss distinguishing between several dimensions of heterogeneity like length of non-employment spell, duration of tenure and size of firm, as well as location in the business cycle at the time of displacement. Our results underscore the substantial and lasting economic costs of coal job displacement in Turkey, offering critical insights for policymakers aiming to mitigate welfare impacts and promote a just transition.

2)

Speaker: Xinyue Miao (University of Bologna)

Title: When Climate Engagement Exits: The Market Pricing of Investor Coalition Withdrawal

Abstract: Do capital markets assign value to investor climate engagement as a form of private governance? Climate Action 100+ is the world's largest investor engagement coalition, coordinating over 700 investors to pressure major corporate emitters to decarbonize. Yet whether markets price this governance mechanism remains unknown. This paper studies the withdrawal of a group of major investors from the coalition. Because the departing investors retained their equity holdings while ceasing coordinated climate engagement, the event separates the engagement channel from the holdings channel. I implement a cross-sectional event study design that relates cumulative abnormal returns around the withdrawal announcement to firms’ pre-event ownership exposure to the exiting investors. The results show that, within the U.S. subsample, firms with greater exit exposure experienced more negative abnormal returns. By contrast, the effect is weaker in the global sample. Overall, the results suggest that markets price coordinated climate engagement through investor coalitions, not only climate risk itself.