Working Paper: NBER ID: w17092
Authors: Marshall Burke; John Dykema; David Lobell; Edward Miguel; Shanker Satyanath
Abstract: A growing body of economics research projects the effects of global climate change on economic outcomes. Climate scientists often criticize these articles because nearly all ignore the well-established uncertainty in future temperature and rainfall changes, and therefore appear likely to have downward biased standard errors and potentially misleading point estimates. This paper incorporates climate uncertainty into estimates of climate change impacts on U.S. agriculture. Accounting for climate uncertainty leads to a much wider range of projected impacts on agricultural profits, with the 95% confidence interval featuring drops of between 17% to 88%. An application to African agriculture yields similar results.
Keywords: Climate Change; Agriculture; Economic Impact; Climate Uncertainty
JEL Codes: O13; Q11; Q54
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| climate uncertainty (Q54) | agricultural profits (Q11) |
| climate uncertainty (Q54) | agricultural yields (Q11) |
| climate uncertainty (Q54) | projected impacts on agricultural productivity (Q11) |
| regression uncertainty (C29) | climate uncertainty (Q54) |
| climate models (E17) | agricultural productivity projections (Q11) |