Six decades and more than 1600 regions worldwide: New database on economic development and climate change

“DOSE captures regional diversity and hence helps us to better understand our economies and how they respond to shocks – climate or other”, says Leonie Wenz, leader of the working group Data-based analysis of climate decisions at PIK. “We hope the insights gained with our new database will aid in the development of more targeted economic policies, particularly in the context of climate change”, she adds.

DOSE provides sub-national economic data from 1960 onwards for more than 1600 regions across the globe, harmonized and matched with climate data. Crucially, these data are reported values from various national statistical offices and supranational bodies like EuroStat or OECD only – which is in contrast to other databases relying on estimation and interpolation to downscale to the regional level.

Even though more and more studies examine the effects of climate on economic development globally, most of them use data for entire countries, even if they are as big and economically and climatically diverse as the USA, China, Russia or Australia. This can be problematic as the weather is so local that the national averages are often too coarse to properly see the economic impact.

In providing economic data at a more granular, sub-national level the DOSE database will enable future research to unveil economic nuances both between and within countries.