Associate Professor Xiaohang Ren, a researcher at the Base, has published a collaborative paper titled "Impact of Climate Vulnerability on Innovation: Spatial Analysis and Trade Regulation Perspectives" in the important academic journal Research in International Business and Finance.

Abstract: Climate change poses a substantial and enduring challenge to the sustainable development of the global green economy. This study reexamines the concept of climate vulnerability by utilizing a balanced panel data covering 113 countries from 2011 to 2020 and employs a spatial econometric approach to systematically investigate both the spatial spillover effects of national innovation activities and the influence of climate vulnerability on innovation performance. In addition, this research is among the first to explore the moderating roles of international trade in the relationship between climate vulnerability and innovation. The findings reveal that global innovation capabilities are unevenly distributed, exhibiting significant regional disparities and strong positive spatial autocorrelation, which highlights the interconnected nature of innovation systems and the presence of cross-border spillovers. In the short term, climate vulnerability does not show a statistically significant impact on innovation. However, over the long term, it exerts a significantly positive effect, whereas both import-export trade and merchandise trade are found to weaken this relationship. Based on these findings, we provide policy recommendations aimed at balancing short-term economic benefits of trade with the long-term goals of climate adaptation and innovation-led development, and further emphasize that embedding sustainability into trade policy represents a vital pathway for advancing technological innovation.

Keywords: Climate vulnerability；Spatial effect；Innovation；Sustainable trade

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.102984

Teacher profile

Xiaohang Ren is a Distinguished Associate Professor at the Business School, Central South University, an Elsevier China Highly Cited Researcher, and a Top 2% Scientist Worldwide. He mainly engages in research on energy finance, financial risk, and financial econometrics. He has published more than 100 papers in authoritative journals at home and abroad,including Journal of the American Statistical Association,Transportation Research Part A, Energy Economics, Quantitative Finance, Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, International Review of Financial Analysis, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Business Strategy and the Environment, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Applied Energy, Resources Policy, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, Energy, Journal of Management Sciences in China (English Edition), Systems Engineering — Theory and Practice, and Chinese Journal of Management Science. Among these, more than 30 are ESI Hot Papers/Highly Cited Papers. He serves as Section Editor of Sustainable Communities (Taylor & Francis), Associate Editor of journals such as Humanities & Social Sciences Communications (the only humanities and social sciences journal under Nature), and Guest Editor of several SSCI journals including Climate Change Economics and Economic Change and Restructuring