American Economic Review Vol. 97 No. 1 2007

The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Agricultural Output and Random Fluctuations in Weather

Olivier Deschênes¹; Michael Greenstone²

¹ Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2127 North Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106. · ² MIT Department of Economics, E52-359, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142-1347.

Abstract

This paper measures the economic impact of climate change on US agricultural land by estimating the effect of random year-to-year variation in temperature and precipitation on agricultural profits. The preferred estimates indicate that climate change will increase annual profits by $1.3 billion in 2002 dollars (2002$) or 4 percent. This estimate is robust to numerous specification checks and relatively precise, so large negative or positive effects are unlikely. We also find the hedonic approach—which is the standard in the previous literature—to be unreliable because it produces estimates that are extremely sensitive to seemingly minor choices about control variables, sample, and weighting.

DOI

10.1257/aer.97.1.354

Volume

97

Issue

1

Pages

354-385

Language

en

Sources

openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

Cite

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