2011 Theses Doctoral

Essays on the Social Impacts of Climate

Hsiang, Solomon M.

It has been hypothesized that local or global climatic conditions can affect societies in a variety of ways. However, to date, it has been difficult to measure the social impact of climate, so the scale and scope of its influence on populations remains mostly theoretical. This dissertation integrates data and quantitative methods from climate science, economics and political science to develop new techniques for empirically measuring the the social impacts of climate. These techniques are used to measure large-scale dynamical relationships between climatological conditions and the response of the societies that are exposed to them. In general, the response of societies to climatological forcing is found to be larger than previously thought. The concluding chapter discusses how these findings may inform policies that govern the global environment and economic development.