The Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture: Accounting for Time-invariant Unobservables in the Hedonic Approach

Ariel Ortiz-Bobea

No 250035, Working Papers from Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management

Abstract: I propose a strategy of measuring the long-run economic impact of climate change on farmland values that tackles the elusive problem of time-invariant spatially-dependent unobservables in the hedonic approach. The strategy exploits that a county’s agricultural productivity is primarily influenced by its own climate, and the fact that climate assignment appears random conditional on average county-neighborhood characteristics. Results suggest that large impacts of climate change on US agriculture seem unlikely. Findings are robust to multiple checks and cannot be attributed to measurement error. Ignoring such confounders considerably overstates long-run climate change impacts on the sector.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Land Economics/Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 82
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eff and nep-env
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:cudawp:250035

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.250035

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