Climatic Conditions and Productivity: An Impact Evaluation in Pre-industrial England

Stéphane Auray, Aurélien Eyquem and Frédéric Jouneau-Sion ()
Additional contact information
Frédéric Jouneau-Sion: Université de Lille

No 2012-31, Working Papers from Center for Research in Economics and Statistics

Abstract: In this paper, we bridge economic data and climatic time series to assess the vulnerability of a pre-industrial economy to changes in climatic conditions. We propose an economic model to extract a measure of total productivity from English data (real wages and land rents) in the pre-industrial period. This measure of total productivity is then related to temperatures and precipitations. We find that lower (respectively higher) than average precipitations (respectively temperatures) enhance productivity. Further, temperatures have non-linear effects on productivity: large temperature variations lower productivity. Quantitatively, a permanent two degree rise in temperatures lowers the level of productivity by more than 22%, and production by more than 26%. This historical impact evaluation may serve as an informative benchmark for currently under-developed economies in front of the upcoming climatic change

Keywords: Climatic conditions TFP shocks; land rent (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 N13 O41 O47 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21
Date: 2012-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eff, nep-env and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://crest.science/RePEc/wpstorage/2012-31.pdf Crest working paper version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Climatic Conditions and Productivity: An Impact Evaluation in Pre-industrial England (2016)
Working Paper: Climatic Conditions and Productivity: An Impact Evaluation in Pre-industrial England (2016)
Working Paper: Climatic Conditions and Productivity: An Impact Evaluation in Pre-industrial England (2014)
Working Paper: Climatic Conditions and Productivity: An Impact Evaluation in Pre-industrial England (2014)
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:crs:wpaper:2012-31

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Center for Research in Economics and Statistics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Secretariat General () and Murielle Jules Maintainer-Email : murielle.jules@ensae.Fr.