Central banks and climate policies

Central banks in developed countries have launched cautious investigations into whether, how, and to what extent they should intervene in climate policy. This column shows that central banks would face trade-offs if they were to start tackling climate change, as the instruments overlap with those already used in their monetary and macroprudential mandates. Using a using a principal–agent setting, the authors argue that central banks’ effectiveness in addressing climate change will depend on capture risk and  calibration risk.