Speaker: Shreekant Gupta, Delhi School of Economics

Abstract

An extensive and growing body of literature on the consequences of climate change for agriculture provides a diverse array of estimated effects. This paper contends documented effects of climate change in the literature are underestimated for three reasons: the use of static specifications, the neglect or inadequate treatment of intra-year variability in key climate change variables, and the asymmetric impact of positive and negative climate shocks. We illustrate this underestimation by presenting a case study focused on the Indian agricultural sector. Through addressing these sources of underestimation our results indicate large long-run impacts of rainfall and temperature anomalies on yields for a range of food and non-food crops.