FLM Research: Extreme temperatures and inequality: Evidence from French agriculture

 

Climate change is expected to alter the frequency of occurrence of extreme weather events. Ap-plying quantile regressions on French crop farmers individual cross sectioned data over the period2002-2017, we quantify the distributional effect of extreme temperatures on farm income. Finding sindicate that both hot and cold extreme temperatures during the growing season may on average substantially reduce farm income. The distributional analysis unveil an important heterogeneity between farmers and opposite effects of cold and hot extreme temperatures. While cold extreme temperatures are found to be more damaging for lowest incomes, and hence increase inequality, hot extreme temperatures are found to be more harmful for highest incomes, and decrease inequality. Two possible reasons for this antagonistic impact of extreme temperatures are explored.First, there could be a crop effect: the proportion of corn in the crop mix decreases with income,while the proportion of rapeseed increases with income. Second, there could be a region effect: the proportion of Northern farmers increases with income while the proportion of Southern farmers decreases with income.

 

Practical informations:

Friday Lunch Meeting will take place from 12.30 pm to 2.00 pm

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