2017 Theses Doctoral

Essays in Climate and Development Economics

D'Agostino, Anthony Louis

One out of every three workers on the planet is employed in agriculture. Consequently, major changes to the way that agriculture is practiced will have outsized effects on society. This dissertation focuses on technology and climate change, two key variables that will exert increasing influence on the rural sector and broader patterns of economic development. While the implementation of new technologies to increase crop productivity will be essential in satisfying rising global food demand, shifts in global climate may undermine those productivity gains in terms of both agronomic and labor market output. Chapter 2 exploits a quasi-experimental research design to assess how crop productivity gains resulting from a new technology affect gender wage disparities in agricultural labor markets. Using high-frequency temperature data merged with nationally representative time use data from Indian workers, Chapter 3 estimates a labor supply response function to temperature shocks that informs projected labor market effects under climate change. Chapter 4 demonstrates that a very parsimonious statistical model offers accurate out-of-sample predictions and provides a discussion on modeling weather's role in agriculture and the current state of adaptation research.