eCommons

 

INVESTIGATING WEATHER SHOCKS AND THE FARMERS' PERCEPTIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE AMERICAN FARMLAND MARKET

Other Titles

Abstract

U.S. agriculture is likely to be affected by climate change due to its inherent reliance on climatic inputs. An important difference among methods of climate change impact assessment is the treatment of farmer adaptation. While the cross-sectional Ricardian approach assumes that farmers have fully adapted to their current climate, panel methods assessing weather effects on profits assume farmers cannot fully adapt to idiosyncratic weather changes. Less is known, however, about the process of climate change adaptation and how farmers transition from practices adapted to a given climate to the next. This thesis posits that farmers must first perceive that climate is changing as a pre- requisite of engaging into adaptive responses. I test whether this first step in the adaptation process is occurring by exploiting the effect of random weather fluctuations on farm real estate, which reflects farmer perceptions about farm profitability. I develop a theoretical model to clarify the channels through which random weather shocks could affect farmland values, in which I consider farmers as Bayesian learners who update their priors about their mean climate based on experienced weather. I then rely on a distributed lag model to test the hypothesis. I find no evidence that weather shocks have affected the farmland market. These findings are robust to geographic and temporal subdivisions. The results suggest that farmers do not perceive recent extreme weather as indications of sizable upcoming changes in farm profitability. This may reflect the countervailing effect of agricultural prices and of government policies such as disaster payments.

Journal / Series

Volume & Issue

Description

Sponsorship

Date Issued

2017-08-30

Publisher

Keywords

Applied Economics; Bayesian Learning; Weather Shocks; Agriculture economics; Adaptation; Agriculture; Climate change

Location

Effective Date

Expiration Date

Sector

Employer

Union

Union Local

NAICS

Number of Workers

Committee Chair

Ortiz Bobea, Ariel

Committee Co-Chair

Committee Member

Ifft, Jennifer Ellen

Degree Discipline

Applied Economics and Management

Degree Name

M.S., Applied Economics and Management

Degree Level

Master of Science

Related Version

Related DOI

Related To

Related Part

Based on Related Item

Has Other Format(s)

Part of Related Item

Related To

Related Publication(s)

Link(s) to Related Publication(s)

References

Link(s) to Reference(s)

Previously Published As

Government Document

ISBN

ISMN

ISSN

Other Identifiers

Rights

Rights URI

Types

dissertation or thesis

Accessibility Feature

Accessibility Hazard

Accessibility Summary

Link(s) to Catalog Record