A regression of farm net revenue on climate, soil, and other socio-economic variables was conducted to capture farmer-adapted responses to climate variations.
They found temperature rise positively affects net revenue, whereas the effect of
reduction in rainfall is negative.
Hunt and Watkiss (2007) perform a review of the literature on studies of climate
change on cities. It found an emerging literature on this subject, but that the studies
are mostly qualitative in nature. The limited evidence reviewed in this study suggested that impacts are likely to be more important for developing country cities.
The study also finds that most studies have focused on coastal cities and there is a
lack of studies on inland cities. Moreover, in many cases, the studies only look at a
single issue (or sector), most commonly sea-level rise.
Thus, while existing studies have examined the impacts of climate change in the
context of India, this paper contributes to a more general debate regarding the
economic impacts of climate change on India’s cities, and motivates the formulation of suitable policies in India’s cities to mitigate the impacts of climate change. It
also takes into account the methodological caveats if we were to take the city as the
unit of observation, and improves upon it, taking off from clues in past studies on
the subject. I also use a unique data set of district domestic products (DDP),
recently published by most Indian states.
4 Data, Model, and Methodology
In this paper, I assess the impact of climate change on cities using several
approaches. In one approach, I run a simple regression of nonagricultural and
agricultural output per capita as a function of several characteristics including
indicators reflecting climate change. Since only growing areas are usually designated as towns, I estimate the population of districts that are larger geographical
areas than cities. They are the equivalent of counties in the USA (see Beeson et al.
2001) for an investigation of this phenomenon in the context of the United States.
Further, districts are designated even if they are growing, declining or stagnating.
Another possible approach to use in order to explain city growth is to use city
output. This is because a city might economically grow, stagnate or decline even
with increased population growth. In fact, Cohen (2004) points out that in
sub-Saharan Africa as well as East Asia, change in the urbanization levels were
very similar. However, the difference was that in sub-Saharan Africa it was
unaccompanied by a corresponding increase in GDP per capita which stagnated,
whereas in East Asia GDP per capita shot up. Taking this into account, I estimate
city growth using plausible measures of city-level output. The basic model which I
estimate may be stated as follows:
284
K.S. Sridhar
They found temperature rise positively affects net revenue, whereas the effect of
reduction in rainfall is negative.
Hunt and Watkiss (2007) perform a review of the literature on studies of climate
change on cities. It found an emerging literature on this subject, but that the studies
are mostly qualitative in nature. The limited evidence reviewed in this study suggested that impacts are likely to be more important for developing country cities.
The study also finds that most studies have focused on coastal cities and there is a
lack of studies on inland cities. Moreover, in many cases, the studies only look at a
single issue (or sector), most commonly sea-level rise.
Thus, while existing studies have examined the impacts of climate change in the
context of India, this paper contributes to a more general debate regarding the
economic impacts of climate change on India’s cities, and motivates the formulation of suitable policies in India’s cities to mitigate the impacts of climate change. It
also takes into account the methodological caveats if we were to take the city as the
unit of observation, and improves upon it, taking off from clues in past studies on
the subject. I also use a unique data set of district domestic products (DDP),
recently published by most Indian states.
4 Data, Model, and Methodology
In this paper, I assess the impact of climate change on cities using several
approaches. In one approach, I run a simple regression of nonagricultural and
agricultural output per capita as a function of several characteristics including
indicators reflecting climate change. Since only growing areas are usually designated as towns, I estimate the population of districts that are larger geographical
areas than cities. They are the equivalent of counties in the USA (see Beeson et al.
2001) for an investigation of this phenomenon in the context of the United States.
Further, districts are designated even if they are growing, declining or stagnating.
Another possible approach to use in order to explain city growth is to use city
output. This is because a city might economically grow, stagnate or decline even
with increased population growth. In fact, Cohen (2004) points out that in
sub-Saharan Africa as well as East Asia, change in the urbanization levels were
very similar. However, the difference was that in sub-Saharan Africa it was
unaccompanied by a corresponding increase in GDP per capita which stagnated,
whereas in East Asia GDP per capita shot up. Taking this into account, I estimate
city growth using plausible measures of city-level output. The basic model which I
estimate may be stated as follows:
284
K.S. Sridhar