MIT economics paper finds climate change will benefit US agriculture

A paper from the MIT Department of Economics finds "climate change will lead to a $1.3 billion (2002$) or 4.0% increase in annual profits" of the US agricultural sector and that "the analysis indicates that the predicted increases in temperature and precipitation will have virtually no effect on yields among the most important crops." The authors state, "Overall, the findings contradict the popular view that climate change will have substantial negative welfare consequences for the US agricultural sector."


Full paper available here

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The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Agricultural Profits and Random Fluctuations in Weather

Olivier Deschenes 

University of California, Santa Barbara - College of Letters & Science - Department of Economics

Michael Greenstone 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Economics ; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ; American Bar Foundation 
July 1, 2004

MIT Department of Economics Research Paper No. 04-26 
Abstract:  
This paper measures the economic impact of climate change on US agricultural land by estimating the effect of the presumably random year-to-year variation in temperature and precipitation on agricultural profits. Using long-run climate change predictions from the Hadley 2 Model, the preferred estimates indicate that climate change will lead to a $1.3 billion (2002$) or 4.0% increase in annual profits. The 95% confidence interval ranges from -$0.5 billion to $3.1 billion and the impact is robust to a wide variety of specification checks, so large negative or positive effects are unlikely. There is considerable heterogeneity in the effect across the country with California's predicted impact equal to -$0.75 billion (or nearly 15% of state agricultural profits). Further, the analysis indicates that the predicted increases in temperature and precipitation will have virtually no effect on yields among the most important crops, which suggest that the small effect on profits are not due to short-run price increases. The paper also implements the hedonic approach that is predominant in the previous literature and finds that it may be unreliable, because it produces estimates of the effect of climate change that are extremely sensitive to seemingly minor decisions about the appropriate control variables, sample and weighting. Overall, the findings contradict the popular view that climate change will have substantial negative welfare consequences for the US agricultural sector.