IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bcu/greewp/greenwp14.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

By 2079, Aridification Will Have Reduced the GDPs of Africa and Asia by 16% and 6.3%, respectively

Author

Listed:
  • Maurizio Malpede
  • Marco Percoco

Abstract

We examine the effects of human-induced desertification on economic growth by exploiting a 56 km-by-56 km grid-cell global dataset on the annual frequency from 1990-2015. We find that areas that experienced large soil aridification are associated with a reduction in GDP per capita. Our results indicate that from 1990-2015, aridification reduced the GDPs of African and Asian countries by 12% and 2.7%, respectively. Our estimates are robust to adding higher-order terms of geo-climatic variables and controlling for country-specific linear trends, which allows us to project future costs of desertification. Our findings show that desertification will generate losses in GDP growth by 16% and 6.7% in Africa and Asia, respectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Maurizio Malpede & Marco Percoco, 2021. "By 2079, Aridification Will Have Reduced the GDPs of Africa and Asia by 16% and 6.3%, respectively," GREEN Working Papers 14, GREEN, Centre for Research on Geography, Resources, Environment, Energy & Networks, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
  • Handle: RePEc:bcu:greewp:greenwp14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.unibocconi.it/iefe/bcu/papers/GREEN_wp14.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2012. "Temperature Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 66-95, July.
    2. Mariaflavia Harari & Eliana La Ferrara, 2018. "Conflict, Climate, and Cells: A Disaggregated Analysis," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(4), pages 594-608, October.
    3. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2008. "Climate Change and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century," NBER Working Papers 14132, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maurizio Malpede & Marco Percoco, 2021. "Desertification and Agricultural Productivity: Evidence from 5,636 Grids," GREEN Working Papers 18, GREEN, Centre for Research on Geography, Resources, Environment, Energy & Networks, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    2. Malpede, Maurizio & Percoco, Marco, 2024. "The long-term economic effects of aridification," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    3. Achim Ahrens, 2015. "Civil conflicts in Africa: Climate, economic shocks, nighttime lights and spill-over effects," SEEC Discussion Papers 1501, Spatial Economics and Econometrics Centre, Heriot Watt University.
    4. Jacopo Lunghi & Maurizio Malpede & Marco Percoco, 2023. "Soil Aridification, Precipitations, and Infant Health: Evidence from Africa," GREEN Working Papers 23, GREEN, Centre for Research on Geography, Resources, Environment, Energy & Networks, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    5. Shiran Victoria Shen, 2021. "Integrating Political Science into Climate Modeling: An Example of Internalizing the Costs of Climate-Induced Violence in the Optimal Management of the Climate," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-24, September.
    6. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    7. Cattaneo, Cristina & Foreman, Timothy, 2023. "Climate change, international migration, and interstate conflicts," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    8. Joshua Graff Zivin & Matthew Neidell, 2014. "Temperature and the Allocation of Time: Implications for Climate Change," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 1-26.
    9. Ang, James B. & Gupta, Satyendra Kumar, 2018. "Agricultural yield and conflict," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 397-417.
    10. Emediegwu, Lotanna E. & Wossink, Ada & Hall, Alastair, 2022. "The impacts of climate change on agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa: A spatial panel data approach," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    11. Andrey Samarskly & Maria Waldinger, 2024. "EU Development Policy and Climate Change," EconPol Policy Brief 61, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    12. Jean-François Maystadt & Margherita Calderone & Liangzhi You, 2015. "Local warming and violent conflict in North and South Sudan," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 649-671.
    13. Ishak, Phoebe W., 2022. "Murder nature: Weather and violent crime in rural Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    14. Verme, Paolo & Schuettler, Kirsten, 2021. "The impact of forced displacement on host communities: A review of the empirical literature in economics," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    15. Christian Traeger, 2014. "Why uncertainty matters: discounting under intertemporal risk aversion and ambiguity," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(3), pages 627-664, August.
    16. Khan,Amjad Muhammad & Kuate,Landry & Pongou,Roland & Zhang,Fan, 2024. "Weather, Water, and Work : Climatic Water Variability and Labor MarketOutcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10823, The World Bank.
    17. Baysan, Ceren & Burke, Marshall & González, Felipe & Hsiang, Solomon & Miguel, Edward, 2019. "Non-economic factors in violence: Evidence from organized crime, suicides and climate in Mexico," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 434-452.
    18. James Fenske & Namrata Kala, 2012. "Climate, ecosystem resilience and the slave trade," CSAE Working Paper Series 2012-23, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    19. Emediegwu, Lotanna E. & Ubabukoh, Chisom L., 2023. "Re-examining the impact of annual weather fluctuations on global livestock production," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(PA).
    20. Sunde, Uwe & Cervellati, Matteo & Esposito, Elena & Valmori, Simona, 2016. "Malaria Risk and Civil Violence," CEPR Discussion Papers 11496, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic Growth; Climate Change; Development;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O44 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Environment and Growth
    • P18 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Energy; Environment
    • Q47 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy Forecasting
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bcu:greewp:greenwp14. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Carlotta Milani (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eabocit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.