Special Climate issue of The Econometrics Journal

Call for papers: Special Issue on Econometric Modelling of Climate
Change and the Green Transition             

The Econometrics Journal and EMCC invite submissions to a special issue on Econometric Modelling of Climate Change and the Green Transition.

We welcome econometric and statistical work on all facets of climate change: econometric and statistical modelling of physical processes, energy transition, emissions and pollution, biodiversity loss, economic damages, migration, climate policy evaluation, and climate finance.

Contributions should feature a strong econometric or statistical central component using methods such as, but not limited to, time-varying parameters and structural change, state space models, (dynamic) panel data models, cointegration, and structural models. We welcome work on both observational data and climate model output.

Raffaella Giacomini will edit the special issue in collaboration with guest editors
Francis X. Diebold (UPenn), Eric Hillebrand (Aarhus), Morten Nielsen (Aarhus), and Felix Pretis (UVic).

The deadline for submissions to this special issue is 28 February 2026. Submissions should comply with the journal’s submission guidelines. Authors should select “Special Issue Article: CLIMATE” as the “category of submission” in Step 2 of the submission procedure.

RIP ARCUS

This ARCUS update just arrived. ARCUS had a great run and definitely helped push forward my research program. (See, e.g., my previous post.) Maybe ARCUS' demise was a planned sunsetting, or maybe not. The update is silent on the that. In the current environment, one has to wonder what went on behind the scenes. In any event: RIP ARCUS.

Dear ARCUS Community,

It is with a mix of gratitude and sadness for our community that we share an important update about ARCUS’s future. After more than three decades of connecting, supporting, and facilitating collaboration within the U.S. Arctic research community, ARCUS will sunset its operations at the end of September 2025 and formally dissolve as a nonprofit organization.

This decision comes after careful consideration and reflection on the changing needs of the Arctic research landscape. While ARCUS as an institution will close, the impact of the relationships, collaborations, and shared work we have fostered will continue to ripple through the community for years to come. We are profoundly grateful for the many individuals—past and present—who have served on our Board, worked on our staff, contributed as partners, and supported ARCUS’s mission with passion and dedication.

We want to assure you that we remain active and committed right up to the end. In the weeks ahead, we’ll continue to shine a light on our member institutions and the vital research they do, including:

Wednesday, 10 September – A joint webinar with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC; an ARCUS member) jumpstarting a project to outline the state of the science around socioeconomic aspects of cold climate housing research and innovation

Thursday, 18 September – A listening session with the IARPC Secretariat and Navigating the New Arctic Community Office (NNA-CO) to encourage community input into the next IARPC Arctic Research Plan

Finally, we warmly invite all who have been part of ARCUS’s journey to join us for a virtual celebration—Friday, 19 September at 10am AK / 11am PT / 12pm MT / 1pm CT / 2pm ET—as we honor this extraordinary community and close this chapter together. Please consider taking a moment to connect one last time under the ARCUS umbrella and help ensure the U.S. Arctic research community continues to thrive even in this time of great change.

With heartfelt thanks,

Dr. Audrey R. Taylor

ARCUS Executive Director

The Second of Two Sea Ice Trilogies: Real Time

The second trilogy, below, this time without Rudebusch, also treats Arctic sea ice forecasting, but from a real-time, fixed-target (September), perspective. All of the work came under the umbrella of the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS), and its Sea Ice Prediction Network (SIPN), which oversaw the Sea Ice Outlook (SIO). 

More on ARCUS in the next post. But for now let's look at the second trilogy.

The basic feature-engineered real-time forecasting approach is proposed in

Diebold, F.X. and Gobel, M. (2022), “A Benchmark Model for Fixed-Target Arctic Sea Ice Forecasting,” Economics Letters, 215, 110478,

and it is compared to a feature-engineered real-time machine learning approach in 

Diebold, F.X., Goebel, M., and Goulet Coulombe, P. (2023), “Assessing and Comparing Fixed-Target Forecasts of Arctic Sea Ice: Glide Charts for Feature-Engineered Linear Regression and Machine Learning Models,” Energy Economics, 124, 106833.

The trilogy culminates with a 61-author (must be real science!) assessment of June-September real-time Arctic sea ice forecasting across many models and years, including the above Diebold et al approach: 

Bushuk, M., et al. (2024), “Predicting September Arctic Sea Ice: A Multi-Model Seasonal Skill Comparison,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 105, 1170-1203. 

The First of Two Arctic Sea Ice Trilogies

I never bogged on the Arctic sea ice "trilogy" below with Glenn Rudebusch et al., certainly not for lack of interest, but rather because much of the research was done when the blog was dormant in the early 2020s. The trilogy addresses the timing of the first ice-free Arctic (IFA) September -- the early IFA (late 2030s) robustly predicted by statistical time-series models; why, in contrast, the large-scale structural climate models tend to get things wrong with a much later IFA; and why you should care. I'm posting on it now not only because I simply think it's interesting and important (and I hope you will too), but also because it complements and contrasts with my next post (on a related but different Arctic sea ice trilogy). Stay tuned! 

Diebold, F.X. and Rudebusch, G.D. (2022), “Probability Assessments of an Ice-Free Arctic: Comparing Statistical and Climate Model Projections,” Journal of Econometrics, 231, 520-534.
---> Compares statistical and large-scale climate model forecasts, and finds that the stat models forecast a much earlier near-ice-free Arctic.

Diebold, F.X., Rudebusch, G.D., Goebel, M., Goulet Coulombe, P. and Zhang, B. (2023), “When Will Arctic Sea Ice Disappear? Projections of Area, Extent, Thickness, and Volume," Journal of Econometrics, 236, 105479.
---> Drills down much deeper on the DR (2022) statistical models, exploring many variations (extent, area, thickness, volume; polynomial vs carbon trends; much more...), establishing robustness of the DR (2022) results and providing more refined forecasts.

Diebold, F.X. and Rudebusch, G.D. (2023), “Climate Models Underestimate the Sensitivity of Arctic Sea Ice to Carbon Emissions,” Energy Economics, 126, 107012.
---> Asks WHY the large-scale models fail so badly in DR (2022) and traces the failure to insufficient carbon sensitivity of sea ice in the large-scale models.

New Penn Master's in Applied Economics and Data Science (MAEDS)

I am thrilled to announce that Penn's newly-launched Master's in Applied Economics and Data Science (MAEDS) is now accepting applicants for entry in August 2026. 

For information on curriculum, the application process, and faculty (including our fantastic newly-hired Executive Director, Mike Lipsitz), see https://www.lps.upenn.edu/degree-programs/maeds. 

Inquiries are already arriving, and there are only thirty spots, but please continue to spread the word to potential students! We firmly believe -- and it seems that students are surely appreciating -- that Penn Economics is uniquely positioned to train leaders for the 21st century at the applied economics + data science interface.

Bobby Mariano Passing

It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Roberto S. ("Bobby") Mariano, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, on Thursday, April 17, 2025. It was some months ago now, but I just recently re-started this blog, so: 

Bobby received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University in 1970, advised by renowned statistician Theodore W. Anderson. He served on the Penn Economics faculty from 1971 to 2004, teaching a variety of graduate and undergraduate econometrics courses. He then moved to Singapore Management University, where he served as Founding Dean of the School of Economics and Social Sciences (2002-2007) and Dean of the School of Economics (2007-2010). He was well known in econometrics for his pioneering methodological contributions to exact finite-sample distribution theory and predictive accuracy comparison, and he was an elected Fellow of the Econometric Society. In 2022, he was appointed by Pope Francis to serve as a Board Member of the Vatican's Supervisory and Financial Information Authority.  He was an energetic and gregarious colleague, and his bright smile, positivity, warmth, and sense of humor will be dearly missed.

Best conference location in North America: 9th Conference on Econometric Models of Climate Change (EMCC)

 

9th Conference on Econometric Models of Climate Change (EMCC)

Great conference, great community, and yes, great location.  I try to begin all recent climate talks by mentioning this conference and showing this picture, which provides fine motivation for students to start doing climate econometrics...

On tyrants and recalcitrant statistical agencies II: The case of the BLS

[Oh geez, I forgot that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was coming out today. I had planned to specialize the last post to the BLS eventually -- as regards not just the Jobs Report but also the CPI. So here goes, quickly...]

Obviously the previous post applies to the current Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Jobs Report situation. Let's hope we don't go too far through the playbook. 

But there's more with the BLS situation. BLS produces not only the Jobs Report, but also the CPI, and hence the key data on inflation faced by U.S. consumers. Just as there's a strong temptation for a tyrant to declare weak jobs data as rigged, so too is there a strong temptation to declare increased inflation data as rigged -- and widespread tariffs may produce increased inflation.

So the BLS may be under immense pressure on multiple fronts in the coming months. I fear that we may go significantly through the playbook, particularly as the CPI just happens to be the price gauge to which Social Security benefits are indexed. If a tyrant who wanted to eliminate the U.S. Social Security system could discredit the CPI, then they could discredit inflation-protected Social Security benefits, and then...

On tyrants and recalcitrant statistical agencies

[This is not about the BLS. Really. At least not yet. In a future post I might specialize it to the BLS.]

What's a tyrant to do when they don't get the data they want from Statistical Agency X? Torture Statistical Agency X, of course. 

Here's my sketch of a playbook:

Deflect blame by insisting that the data were "rigged" by politically–motivated actors.

Install a political loyalist to produce "better" numbers.

If Agency X guardrails constrain the loyalist from producing better numbers, then weaken the Agency X guardrails.

If the weakened Agency X guardrails still don't produce the desired result, then weaken the entire Agency X, for example by slashing its budget.

If the weakened Agency X -- with a loyalist at the helm, weakened guardrails, and a slashed budget – – still fails to produce the desired result, then destroy it, for example by eliminating it and assigning its duties to a more pliable agency (perhaps newly created), or even by eliminating its duties ("Who needs this rigged and boring data anyway? Isn't it just a waste of taxpayer money?")

Real Growth as Assessed by ADS Looks OK So Far

A weak jobs report, and much more importantly the related and absurd firing of the BLS commissioner on August 1, have dominated the recent news. But the firing is a topic for a subsequent blog.

For now let's step back and take a look at the broad U.S. employment/growth picture. Employment gains have evidently slowed in recent months, but job destruction as indicated by initial claims has not risen. Initial claims are a key component of the ADS index of real economic activity, and ADS recently and currently continues to indicate "typical", or "average", growth. So: so far so good, but keep your eye on initial claims in future weeks (updates arrive every Thursday). Fingers crossed.