Probabilistic Forecasting of Climate Policy Uncertainty: The Role of Macro-financial Variables and Google Search Data

Abstract

Accurately forecasting Climate Policy Uncertainty (CPU) is essential for designing climate strategies that balance economic growth with environmental objectives. Elevated CPU levels can delay regulatory implementation, hinder investment in green technologies, and amplify public resistance to policy reforms, particularly during periods of economic stress. Despite the growing literature documenting the economic relevance of CPU, forecasting its evolution and understanding the role of macro-financial drivers in shaping its fluctuations have not been explored. This study addresses this gap by presenting the first effort to forecast CPU and identify its key drivers. We employ various statistical tools to identify macro-financial exogenous drivers, alongside Google search data to capture early public attention to climate policy. Local projection impulse response analysis quantifies the dynamic effects of these variables, revealing that household financial vulnerability, housing market activity, business confidence, credit conditions, and financial market sentiment exert the most substantial impacts. These predictors are incorporated into a Bayesian Structural Time Series (BSTS) framework to produce probabilistic forecasts for both US and Global CPU indices. Extensive experiments and statistical validation demonstrate that BSTS with time-invariant regression coefficients achieves superior forecasting performance. We demonstrate that this performance stems from its variable selection mechanism, which identifies exogenous predictors that are empirically significant and theoretically grounded, as confirmed by the feature importance analysis. From a policy perspective, the findings underscore the importance of adaptive climate policies that remain effective across shifting economic conditions while supporting long-term environmental and growth objectives.