A climate policy shock? - measuring the impact of the Paris agreement on the oil and gas industry

Abstract

The thesis’ event study findings are in line with Mukanjari and Sterner (2018),showing that the Paris Agreement (PA)had a mildly nonsignificant negative effect on oil and gas companies, given that the PA was surprising but not impactful, as shown by the opinion mining analysis. Hence, it was not a climate policy shock for the industry; accounting for different company characteristics could not provide new insights in to vulnerability to climate policy shocks. Interestingly, solar energy was significantly positively affected by the agreement because heavy investments were announced during the negotiations. Trump’s election and the announcement to withdraw from the PA hada similar mild effect in the opposite direction for the oil and gas industry.