The long-lived effects of historic climate on the wealth of nations
The long-lived effects of historic climate on the wealth of nations
We investigate the long-run consequences of historic, climatic temperatures (1730-2000) for the modern cross-country income distribution. Using a newly constructed dataset of climatic temperatures stretching over three centuries (18th, 19th, and 20th), we estimate a robust and significant time-varying, nonmonotonic effect of climatic temperature upon current incomes for a crosssection of 167 countries. We find a large, positive effect of 18th century climatic temperature and an even larger, negative effect of 19th century climatic temperature upon current incomes. When historic, climatic temperature is introduced, the effect of 20th century climatic temperature on current income is either weakly positive or insignificant. Our findings are robust to various sub-samples, additional geographic controls, and alternative income measures. The negative relationship between current, climatic temperature and current income that is commonly estimated appears to reflect the long-run effect of climatic variations in the 18th and 19th centuries
climate, temperature, economic performance, geography, historyJEL codes: N50, O11, O40, O50, O57
University of Southampton
Bluedorn, John C.
f2ebe71c-2c3a-443b-a88c-659bcd483b3a
Valentinyi, Akos
7519c19b-8434-4ba2-88a6-ae066471ffcf
Vlassopoulos, Michael
2d557227-958c-4855-92a8-b74b398f95c7
November 2009
Bluedorn, John C.
f2ebe71c-2c3a-443b-a88c-659bcd483b3a
Valentinyi, Akos
7519c19b-8434-4ba2-88a6-ae066471ffcf
Vlassopoulos, Michael
2d557227-958c-4855-92a8-b74b398f95c7
Bluedorn, John C., Valentinyi, Akos and Vlassopoulos, Michael
(2009)
The long-lived effects of historic climate on the wealth of nations
(Centre for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper Series, 7572)
Southampton, GB.
University of Southampton
36pp.
Record type:
Monograph
(Working Paper)
Abstract
We investigate the long-run consequences of historic, climatic temperatures (1730-2000) for the modern cross-country income distribution. Using a newly constructed dataset of climatic temperatures stretching over three centuries (18th, 19th, and 20th), we estimate a robust and significant time-varying, nonmonotonic effect of climatic temperature upon current incomes for a crosssection of 167 countries. We find a large, positive effect of 18th century climatic temperature and an even larger, negative effect of 19th century climatic temperature upon current incomes. When historic, climatic temperature is introduced, the effect of 20th century climatic temperature on current income is either weakly positive or insignificant. Our findings are robust to various sub-samples, additional geographic controls, and alternative income measures. The negative relationship between current, climatic temperature and current income that is commonly estimated appears to reflect the long-run effect of climatic variations in the 18th and 19th centuries
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Published date: November 2009
Keywords:
climate, temperature, economic performance, geography, historyJEL codes: N50, O11, O40, O50, O57
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 71074
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/71074
ISSN: 0265-8003
PURE UUID: c1d6fa87-3509-46e6-b61b-1e972dbd4332
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Date deposited: 15 Jan 2010
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 02:52
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Contributors
Author:
John C. Bluedorn
Author:
Akos Valentinyi
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