What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature
Name
Olken_What do.pdf
Size
518.38 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4e77072ab677aacc036ed7bd31091285
Author(s)
Dell, Melissa Lynne
Jones, Benjamin F.
Olken, Benjamin A.
Date Issued
September 2014
Journal
Journal of Economic Literature
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Dell, Melissa, Benjamin F. Jones, and Benjamin A. Olken. “ What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature .” Journal of Economic Literature 52, no. 3 (September 2014): 740–798. © 2014 American Economic Association
Version
Final published version
Abstract
A rapidly growing body of research applies panel methods to examine how temperature, precipitation, and windstorms influence economic outcomes. These studies focus on changes in weather realizations over time within a given spatial area and demonstrate impacts on agricultural output, industrial output, labor productivity, energy demand, health, conflict, and economic growth, among other outcomes. By harnessing exogenous variation over time within a given spatial unit, these studies help credibly identify (i) the breadth of channels linking weather and the economy, (ii) heterogeneous treatment effects across different types of locations, and (iii) nonlinear effects of weather variables. This paper reviews the new literature with two purposes. First, we summarize recent work, providing a guide to its methodologies, datasets, and findings. Second, we consider applications of the new literature, including insights for the "damage function" within models that seek to assess the potential economic effects of future climate change.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.52.3.740
