Does choice of drought index influence estimates of drought-induced rice losses in India?

Francisco Pereira Fontes, Ashley Gorst and Charles Palmer

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Drought events have critical impacts on agricultural production yet there is little consensus on how these should be measured and defined, with implications for drought research and policy. We develop a flexible rainfall-temperature drought index that captures all dry events and we classify these as Type 1 (above-average cooling degree days) and Type 2 droughts (below-average cooling degree days). Applied to a panel dataset of Indian districts over 1966-2009, Type 2 droughts are found to have negative marginal impacts comparable to those of Type 1 droughts. Irrigation more effectively reduces Type 2 drought-induced yield losses than Type 1 yield losses. Over time, Type 1 drought losses have declined while Type 2 losses have risen. Estimates of average yield losses due to Type 1 droughts are reduced by up to 27 per cent when Type 2 droughts are omitted. The associated ex-post economic costs in terms of rice production are underestimated by up to 124 per cent.

Keywords: agriculture; rice; climate; drought; India; rainfall; temperature (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q10 Q19 Q54 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2020-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-env and nep-gen
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Published in Environment and Development Economics, 1, October, 2020, 25(5), pp. 459 - 481. ISSN: 1355-770X

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Journal Article: Does choice of drought index influence estimates of drought-induced rice losses in India? (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:103378

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