Climate Policy Uncertainty Index

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We are pleased to host the U.S Climate Policy Uncertainty (CPU) Index developed by Konstantinos Gavriilidis, Diego R. Känzig, Ramya Raghavan and Jim Stock in The Macroeconomic Effects of Climate Policy. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Climate Policy".

The index is constructed by applying automated text-search methods to the full text of major U.S. newspapers, following the broader literature on news-based measures of policy uncertainty. Specifically, we identify articles that jointly discuss climate change, policy, and uncertainty-related concepts, using carefully curated dictionaries for each component. Dictionaries are constructed in broad and narrow versions to balance coverage and precision; the narrow version serves as our baseline. The index is based on coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.

The index exhibits pronounced spikes around major climate policy events, including international climate agreements, congressional debates over climate legislation, regulatory actions and reversals, and presidential elections associated with shifts in climate policy direction.

In addition to the headline CPU Index, we also provide measures of climate policy news intensity and climate policy sentiment. The data is intended to support research on the macroeconomic, financial, and firm-level effects of climate policy uncertainty.

We also introduce an event-based instrument designed to identify exogenous shocks to climate policy uncertainty. The instrument is constructed from major climate policy events that generate sharp changes in uncertainty. Event intensity is measured using newspaper coverage and is explicitly purged of the first moment of climate policy (policy stringency), isolating variation that reflects uncertainty rather than anticipated policy tightening or loosening. This instrument is used to construct a monthly series of climate policy uncertainty shocks, which can also be used for macroeconomic and firm-level analysis.

The methodology and results are described in detail in: Gavriilidis, Känzig, Raghavan, and Stock (2026). "The Macroeconomic Effects of Climate Policy Uncertainty". Working Paper. Available at: https://dkaenzig.github.io/diegokaenzig.com/Papers/gkrs_cpu.pdf