Three factors hold back low-carbon investment in Europe: the risk/return profile of low-carbon investment projects, regulatory and behavioural features in the financial sector and a more global political economy context. These are key issues to create an investment climate for climate investment.

Financial shocks can originate from ecological imbalances what justifies more careful attention by the financial regulators to this specific risk. A new macroprudential framework is proposed.

A new UN Climate agreement will probably be signed by the end of this year with some incremental progress but even inveterate optimists like myself don’t believe it will be capable of ‘bridging the gap’ between the maximum that 196 governments can agree upon by consensus...

Once again, the Federal Reserve has postponed the date of exit from the zero lower bound. We show that the pace of the tightening cycle matters more than the exact timing of the first interest rate hike for the macroeconomy.

We draw six political economy lessons from the actual dynamics of climate negotiations and their connection to the new macroeconomic normal emerging in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. A specific proposal follows.

The Bangladesh central bank has a long tradition of favouring socially sustainable financing behavior. It was thus natural to extend its mission to the question of climate change mitigation and adaptation investments, both internally and externally in the global financial system.

Four guide-posts for efficient low-carbon finance are proposed: remove subsidies for high-carbon technologies, improve the cost-effectiveness of low-carbon subsidies, encourage private sector innovation, and maintain transparent public policy tools that support cost-benefit accounting.

As the pace of action looks set to rumble on, countries should seek to make progress on resolving several key issues including the free-rider problem.

The aim of this webpage, co-hosted by France Stratégie and CEPII, is to provide a medium for experts and non-experts to discuss the merits and the limits of the various proposals and initiatives in the field of international finance. It is intended to become a forum where the debate on the financial system’s contribution to the energy transition can flourish.

The decision to change the exchange rate regime of the renminbi taken by the Chinese authorities at the beginning of August might be less a response to the economic downturn than a further step, against all odds, in a bold but risky financial liberalization agenda.