IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/25221.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Crucial Role of International Trade in Adaptation to Climate Change

Author

Listed:
  • Christophe Gouel
  • David Laborde

Abstract

Climate change effects on agricultural yields will be uneven over the world with a few countries, mostly in high latitudes, that may experience gains, while most will see average yield decrease. This paper aims at quantifying the role of international trade in attenuating the effects of climate change by allowing the expression of the new climate-induced pattern of comparative advantages. To do this, we develop a quantitative general equilibrium trade model where the representation of acreage and land use choices is inspired from modern Ricardian trade models but also consistent with theoretical and empirical literature on land use choices. The model is calibrated on spatially explicit information about potential yields before and after climate change coming from the agronomic literature. The results show that the climate-induced yield changes generate large price movements that incentivize adjustments in acreage and trade. The new trade pattern is very different from the current one, showing the important role of trade flows in adapting to climate change. This is confirmed by larger welfare losses from climate change when adjustments in trade flows are constrained versus when they are not.

Suggested Citation

  • Christophe Gouel & David Laborde, 2018. "The Crucial Role of International Trade in Adaptation to Climate Change," NBER Working Papers 25221, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25221
    Note: EEE ITI
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w25221.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abebayehu Tegene & Wallace E. Huffman & John A. Miranowski, 1988. "Dynamic Corn Supply Functions: A Model with Explicit Optimization," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 70(1), pages 103-111.
    2. Roman Keeney & Thomas W. Hertel, 2009. "The Indirect Land Use Impacts of United States Biofuel Policies: The Importance of Acreage, Yield, and Bilateral Trade Responses," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 91(4), pages 895-909.
    3. Alain Carpentier & Elodie Letort, 2014. "Multicrop Production Models with Multinomial Logit Acreage Shares," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 59(4), pages 537-559, December.
    4. Ruiqing Miao & Madhu Khanna & Haixiao Huang, 2016. "Responsiveness of Crop Yield and Acreage to Prices and Climate," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(1), pages 191-211.
    5. Mekbib G. Haile & Matthias Kalkuhl & Joachim von Braun, 2016. "Worldwide Acreage and Yield Response to International Price Change and Volatility: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis for Wheat, Rice, Corn, and Soybeans," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(1), pages 172-190.
    6. William Lin & Robert Dismukes, 2007. "Supply Response under Risk: Implications for Counter-Cyclical Payments' Production Impact," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 29(1), pages 64-86.
    7. Andreyeva, T. & Long, M.W. & Brownell, K.D., 2010. "The impact of food prices on consumption: A systematic review of research on the price elasticity of demand for food," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 100(2), pages 216-222.
    8. Sebastian Sotelo, 2020. "Domestic Trade Frictions and Agriculture," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(7), pages 2690-2738.
    9. Jean-Paul Chavas & Matthew T. Holt, 1990. "Acreage Decisions Under Risk: The Case of Corn and Soybeans," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 72(3), pages 529-538.
    10. Ludo Peeters & Yves Surry, 1993. "Estimating feed utilisation matrices using a cost function approach," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 9(2), pages 109-126, August.
    11. Christophe Gouel & Houssein Guimbard, 2019. "Nutrition Transition and the Structure of Global Food Demand," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 101(2), pages 383-403.
    12. Fally, Thibault & Sayre, James E., 2018. "Commodity Trade Matters," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt9121v3rt, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    13. Hertel, Thomas, 1997. "Global Trade Analysis: Modeling and applications," GTAP Books, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University, number 7685, December.
    14. Randhir, Timothy O. & Hertel, Thomas W., 2000. "Trade Liberalization as a Vehicle for Adapting to Global Warming," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(2), pages 159-172, October.
    15. Michael J. Roberts & Wolfram Schlenker, 2013. "Identifying Supply and Demand Elasticities of Agricultural Commodities: Implications for the US Ethanol Mandate," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2265-2295, October.
    16. Golan, Amos & Judge, George & Robinson, Sherman, 1994. "Recovering Information from Incomplete or Partial Multisectoral Economic Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(3), pages 541-549, August.
    17. Elhanan Helpman & Marc Melitz & Yona Rubinstein, 2008. "Estimating Trade Flows: Trading Partners and Trading Volumes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 441-487.
    18. Peter F. Orazem & John A. Miranowski, 1994. "A Dynamic Model of Acreage Allocation with General and Crop-Specific Soil Capital," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 76(3), pages 385-395.
    19. Kym Anderson & Gordon Rausser & Johan Swinnen, 2013. "Political Economy of Public Policies: Insights from Distortions to Agricultural and Food Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(2), pages 423-477, June.
    20. Rao, J. Mohan, 1989. "Agricultural supply response: A survey," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 3(1), pages 1-22, March.
    21. Chembezi, Duncan M. & Womack, Abner W., 1992. "Regional Acreage Response For U.S. Corn And Wheat: The Effects Of Government Programs," Southern Journal of Agricultural Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 24(1), pages 1-12, July.
    22. JunJie Wu & Kathleen Segerson, 1995. "The Impact of Policies and Land Characteristics on Potential Groundwater Pollution in Wisconsin," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 77(4), pages 1033-1047.
    23. W. Jill Harrison & J. Mark Horridge & K.R. Pearson, 2000. "Decomposing Simulation Results with Respect to Exogenous Shocks," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 15(3), pages 227-249, June.
    24. Chomitz, Kenneth M & Gray, David A, 1996. "Roads, Land Use, and Deforestation: A Spatial Model Applied to Belize," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 10(3), pages 487-512, September.
    25. Miranowski, John & Orazem, Peter, 1994. "A Dynamic Model of Acreage Allocation with General and Crop-Specific Capital," Staff General Research Papers Archive 10695, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    26. Peeters, Ludo & Surry, Yves, 1993. "Estimating feed utilisation matrices using a cost function approach," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 109-126, August.
    27. Dornbusch, Rudiger & Fischer, Stanley & Samuelson, Paul A, 1977. "Comparative Advantage, Trade, and Payments in a Ricardian Model with a Continuum of Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(5), pages 823-839, December.
    28. Porteous, Obie C., 2015. "High Trade Costs and Their Consequences: An Estimated Model of African Agricultural Storage and Trade," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205776, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    29. Arnaud Costinot & Dave Donaldson & Cory Smith, 2016. "Evolving Comparative Advantage and the Impact of Climate Change in Agricultural Markets: Evidence from 1.7 Million Fields around the World," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(1), pages 205-248.
    30. Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), 2014. "Handbook of International Economics," Handbook of International Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 4, number 4.
    31. Danhong Chen & David Abler & De Zhou & Xiaohua Yu & Wyatt Thompson, 2016. "A Meta-analysis of Food Demand Elasticities for China," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 38(1), pages 50-72.
    32. Erik Lichtenberg, 1989. "Land Quality, Irrigation Development, and Cropping Patterns in the Northern High Plains," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 71(1), pages 187-194.
    33. Stavins, Robert N & Jaffe, Adam B, 1990. "Unintended Impacts of Public Investments on Private Decisions: The Depletion of Forested Wetlands," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 337-352, June.
    34. Miller, Douglas & Plantinga, Andrew J., 1999. "Modeling Land Use Decisions with Aggregate Data," Staff General Research Papers Archive 1487, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xin Zhao & Dominique Y van der Mensbrugghe & Roman M. Keeney & Wallace E. Tyner, 2021. "Improving the Way Land Use Change is Handled in Economic Models," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Peter Dixon & Joseph Francois & Dominique van der Mensbrugghe (ed.), POLICY ANALYSIS AND MODELING OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY A Festschrift Celebrating Thomas Hertel, chapter 15, pages 467-515, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Jerome Dumortier & Miguel Carriquiry & Amani Elobeid, 2021. "Impact of climate change on global agricultural markets under different shared socioeconomic pathways," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 52(6), pages 963-984, November.
    3. Federal Reserve Bank Kansas City, 2018. "Agriculture in a Global Economy: 2018 Agricultural Symposium," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Special I, pages 1-96.
    4. Paul Brenton & Vicky Chemutai & Mari Pangestu, 2022. "Trade and food security in a climate change‐impacted world," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 53(4), pages 580-591, July.
    5. Uris L. C. Baldos & Thomas W. Hertel & Frances C. Moore, 2019. "Understanding the Spatial Distribution of Welfare Impacts of Global Warming on Agriculture and its Drivers," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 101(5), pages 1455-1472, October.
    6. Annalisa Marini & Steve McCorriston, 2019. "Weather, Prices and Spillovers," Discussion Papers 1905, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    7. Zhao, Xin & Calvin, Katherine & Wise, Marshall & Iyer, Gokul, 2021. "The role of global agricultural market integration in multiregional economic modeling: using hindcast experiments to validate an Armington model," Conference papers 333309, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    8. Shon M Ferguson & Johan Gars, 2020. "Measuring the impact of agricultural production shocks on international trade flows," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 47(3), pages 1094-1132.
    9. Marcel Adenäuer & Clara Frezal & Thomas Chatzopoulos, 2023. "Mitigating the impact of extreme weather events on agricultural markets through trade," OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers 198, OECD Publishing.
    10. Heitor Pellegrina & Sebastian Sotelo, 2019. "Migration, Specialization and Trade: Evidence from the Brazilian March to the West," 2019 Meeting Papers 863, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Farid Farrokhi & Heitor S. Pellegrina, 2020. "Global Trade and Margins of Productivity in Agriculture," NBER Working Papers 27350, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Zhao, Xin & Calvin, Katherine & Wise, Marshall, 2020. "The critical role of conversion cost and comparative advantage in modeling agricultural land use change," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304204, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    13. Xin Zhao & Katherine V. Calvin & Marshall A. Wise, 2020. "The Critical Role Of Conversion Cost And Comparative Advantage In Modeling Agricultural Land Use Change," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 11(01), pages 1-44, February.
    14. Abigail Snyder & Katherine Calvin & Leon Clarke & James Edmonds & Page Kyle & Kanishka Narayan & Alan Di Vittorio & Stephanie Waldhoff & Marshall Wise & Pralit Patel, 2020. "The domestic and international implications of future climate for U.S. agriculture in GCAM," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(8), pages 1-11, August.
    15. Cui, Xiaomeng, 2020. "Climate change and adaptation in agriculture: Evidence from US cropping patterns," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    16. Santiago Guerrero & Ben Henderson & Hugo Valin & Charlotte Janssens & Petr Havlik & Amanda Palazzo, 2022. "The impacts of agricultural trade and support policy reform on climate change adaptation and environmental performance: A model-based analysis," OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers 180, OECD Publishing.

    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. Gouel, Christophe & Laborde, David, 2021. "The crucial role of domestic and international market-mediated adaptation to climate change," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    2. Hyunseok Kim & GianCarlo Moschini, 2018. "The Dynamics of Supply: U.S. Corn and Soybeans in the Biofuel Era," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 94(4), pages 593-613.
    3. CARPENTIER, Alain & GOHIN, Alexandre & SCKOKAI, Paolo & THOMAS, Alban, 2015. "Economic modelling of agricultural production: past advances and new challenges," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement (RAEStud), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), vol. 96(1), March.
    4. Ramsey, Steven M. & Bergtold, Jason S. & Heier Stamm, Jessica, 2018. "An Artificial Neural Network Approach to Acreage-Share Modeling," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274395, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Weng, Weizhe & Cobourn, Kelly M. & Kemanian, Armen R. & Boyle, Kevin J. & Shi, Yuning & Stachelek, Joseph & White, Charles, 2020. "Quantifying Co-Benefits of Water Quality Policies: An Integrated Assessment Model of Nitrogen Management," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304667, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Md Zabid Iqbal & Bruce A. Babcock, 2018. "Global growing‐area elasticities of key agricultural crops estimated using dynamic heterogeneous panel methods," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(6), pages 681-690, November.
    7. Boussios, David & Barkley, Andrew P., 2012. "Kansas Grain Supply Response to Economic and Biophysical Factors, 1977-2007," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124385, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    8. Nicholas J. Pates & Nathan P. Hendricks, 2021. "Fields from Afar: Evidence of Heterogeneity in United States Corn Rotational Response from Remote Sensing Data," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(5), pages 1759-1782, October.
    9. Carpentier, Alain & Letort, Elodie, 2009. "Modeling acreage decisions within the multinomial Logit framework," Working Papers 211011, Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2).
    10. Kan, Iddo & Reznik, Ami & Kaminski, Jonathan & Kimhi, Ayal, 2023. "The impacts of climate change on cropland allocation, crop production, output prices and social welfare in Israel: A structural econometric framework," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    11. Jouf, C. & Lawson, L.A., 2022. "European farmers’ responses to higher commodity prices: Cropland expansion or forestlands preservation?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    12. Chouaib Jouf & Laté Lawson, 2021. "European farmers’ responses to higher commodity prices: cropland expansion or forestlands preservation?," EconomiX Working Papers 2021-10, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    13. Carpentier, Alain & Gohin, Alexandre, 2015. "On the economic theory of crop rotations: value of the crop rotation effects and implications on acreage choice modeling," Working Papers 205299, Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2).
    14. Alain Carpentier & Elodie Letort, 2014. "Multicrop Production Models with Multinomial Logit Acreage Shares," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 59(4), pages 537-559, December.
    15. Chakir, Raja & Lungarska, Anna, 2015. "Agricultural land rents in land use models: a spatial econometric analysis," 150th Seminar, October 22-23, 2015, Edinburgh, Scotland 212641, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    16. Shon M Ferguson & Johan Gars, 2020. "Measuring the impact of agricultural production shocks on international trade flows," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 47(3), pages 1094-1132.
    17. Chonabayashi, Shun, 2014. "Accounting for Land Use Adaptation to Climate Change Impacts on US Agriculture," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 170710, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    18. Boussios, David & Barkley, Andrew, 2014. "Producer Expectations and the Extensive Margin in Grain Supply Response," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(3), pages 335-356, December.
    19. Vincent Martinet, 2012. "Effect of soil heterogeneity on the welfare economics of biofuel policies," Working Papers 2012/01, INRA, Economie Publique.
    20. Basak Bayramoglu & Raja CHAKIR & Anna LUNGARSKA, 2016. "Land Use and Freshwater Ecosystems in France," EcoMod2016 9420, EcoMod.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D58 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models
    • F18 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Environment
    • Q17 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agriculture in International Trade
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:25221. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.