Precipitation, Profits, and Pile-Ups
Andrew Leigh
No 629, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University
Abstract:
In considering the economic impacts of climatic changes, economists frequently use annual national income as a proxy for social welfare. I show that such studies suffer from a significant bias, arising from the fact that such models typically ignore changes in mortality rates. Using panel data from Australia, I show that rainfall lowers traffic deaths, suggesting that the standard approach may underestimate the true economic cost of droughts.
Keywords: national income; social welfare; rainfall; traffic fatalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I31 J17 Q25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/CEPR/DP629.pdf (application/pdf)
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:auu:dpaper:629
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().