WARMING AND INCOME GROWTH IN THE UNITED STATES: A HETEROGENEOUS, COMMON FACTOR DYNAMIC PANEL ANALYSIS
Keyword(s):
Long Run
◽
This paper analyzes whether temperature changes influence economic growth in the contiguous 48 US states by employing panel methods that address both heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. Ultimately, it is determined that the negative effect of warming (initially proxied by cooling degree days) is restricted to agriculture GDP. But when weathers’ impact was measured by average summer temperature, the negative effect — still mostly restricted to agriculture GDP — was substantially and significantly larger (a finding similar to previous work) and geographically uniform. Yet, the model’s dynamics suggested that the magnitude of the short-run impact was larger (in absolute terms) than the long-run impact.