Climate change and agriculture: a global meta-analysis of the Ricardian literature

Allan Beltran, Saúl Basurto Hernández, Robert Mendelsohn and Luis Miguel Galindo

Chapter 2 in Handbook on Climate Change Impacts, Mitigation, and Adaptation in Agriculture, 2026, pp 8-33 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter presents the first global meta-analysis of Ricardian estimates that assess the impact of climate change on agricultural rents (land value). Based on 6,105 marginal effects from 227 studies across 71 countries, covering 64% of global cropland and 80% of crop production value, we provide a global synthesis of how temperature and precipitation affect Ricardian rents. Our estimates suggest that a 1°C increase in temperature reduces agricultural rents by 7–9% globally, while the effect of precipitation is smaller and statistically insignificant on average. Precipitation effects are more variable and context specific. Our analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity across regions, countries, and seasons, and finds some publication bias in temperature estimates. Countries showing the largest negative impacts of temperature and the largest positive impacts of precipitation are those with limited empirical coverage and small sample sizes. We discuss methodological challenges in aggregating Ricardian results, and outline directions for future research.

Keywords: Climate change; Agriculture; Meta-analysis; Ricardian method; Marginal effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035344963
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035344970.00009 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23858_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().