Ethan Hunt | 2026 I.S. Symposium
Name: Ethan Hunt
Title: Evaluating the Development Impacts of Climate Finance
Major: Economics
Minor: Mathematics
Pathway: Entrepreneurship
Advisor: Vedanshi Nevatia
While foreign aid explicitly targets poverty-related development outcomes, climate finance does not. This raises a central question: does climate finance generate broader development outcomes beyond the mitigation of carbon emissions and prevention of climate change-related damages? The assumption of the existence of positive development outcomes has justified billions of US dollars of financing, and there has been little evaluation of the impact of climate finance in this context. Using data from Fan, Wang, Zhong, Dong, and An (2025), I find that climate finance is associated with modest gains in private capital formation, a small increase in employment, and heterogeneous effects across labor force participation in addition to no observed relationship with health. These results are reflective in the estimated effect on GDP per capita growth and poverty measures. They also further suggest that climate finance may more greatly benefit countries vulnerable to climate change, but gender equity should be considered in its disbursement.
Posted in Symposium 2026 on May 1, 2026.
