Seminar Vol. 162

Title: Quantifying the Temperature Effects on China's Total Agricultural Output 

Speaker: Xiaoguang Chen, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics

Time: May 24rd, 2019 15:00–16:30

Venue: Conference Room 106B, Zhonghui Building (IESR, JNU College of Economics)

About the speaker:

Xiaoguang Chen is a Professor at the Research Institute of Economics and Management, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. He received his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Consumer Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2010. His research interests include Energy and Environmental Economics, Mathematical Programming, Applied Econometrics, and Agricultural Economics. Xiaoguang Chen has been widely publishing in such international journals as Journal of Environment Economics and Management, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Transportation Science, and others. The economist currently serves as an Associate Editor of Environment and Development Economics. 

Abstract:

We pair a county-level panel of annual agricultural production with daily weather outcomes to measure the effects of temperature fluctuations on total agricultural output value of farming, forestry, animal husbandry and fishing in China. We find four main results: (i) the total agricultural output decreases with higher spring, summer and winter temperatures and increases with higher fall temperatures; (ii) temperature affects agricultural output mainly through its impact on agricultural total factor productivity; (iii) higher temperatures increase the use of several agricultural inputs, including fertilizer, machinery, total planted acres and total irrigated acres; and (iv) we project that China’s aggregate agricultural output will fall annually by 6.5-17.4% during the mid-21st century under the warming scenarios considered by the global climate model UKMO-HadCM3, equivalent to a monetary loss of CNY 147.6-395.0 billion in 2008 values.