Local sectoral specialization in a warming world

Bruno Conte, Klaus Desmet, Dávid Krisztián Nagy and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg

Journal of Economic Geography, 2021, vol. 21, issue 4, 493-530

Abstract: This paper quantitatively assesses the world’s changing economic geography and sectoral specialization due to global warming. It proposes a two-sector dynamic spatial growth model that incorporates the relation between economic activity, carbon emissions and temperature. The model is taken to the data at the 1° by 1° resolution for the entire world. Over a 200-year horizon, rising temperatures consistent with emissions under Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 push people and economic activity northwards to Siberia, Canada and Scandinavia. Compared with a world without climate change, clusters of agricultural specialization shift from Central Africa, Brazil and India’s Ganges Valley, to Central Asia, parts of China and northern Canada. Equatorial latitudes that lose agriculture specialize more in non-agriculture but, due to their persistently low productivity, lose population. By the year 2200, predicted losses in real GDP and utility are 6% and 15%, respectively. Higher trade costs make adaptation through changes in sectoral specialization more costly, leading to less geographic concentration in agriculture and larger climate-induced migration.

Keywords: Global warming; sectoral specialization; trade; migration; geography; growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F18 O41 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Local Sectoral Specialization in a Warming World (2020)
Working Paper: Local Sectoral Specialization in a Warming World (2020)
Working Paper: Local Sectoral Specialization in a Warming World (2020)
Working Paper: Local sectoral specialization in a warming world (2020)
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