Empirical Analyses of the Effect of Climate Change on Economic and Political Development in Less Developed Countries

气候变化是人类活动造成的全球平均气温上升，对作物产量和牲畜产生重大影响，从而对世界大部分地区的营养、健康和贫困产生重大影响。气候变化的间接影响包括政治不稳定和冲突等社会后果。低收入国家特别容易遭受这些负面影响。了解气候变化的经济和社会影响是设计应对这些影响的政策和机构的重要第一步。因此，该项目的总体目标是扩大关于气候变化对欠发达国家经济和政治影响的经验知识基础。气候变化伴随着天气模式的变化和干旱和洪水等极端天气事件的增加。该项目的近期目标是促进更好地了解极端天气事件在三个重要领域的影响。首先，我将研究对政治态度的影响。这一分析将说明气候变化可能对破坏民主政权稳定和加强独裁政府构成的危险。其次，我计划分析天气冲击对认知能力的影响。分析将有助于更好地了解对人力资本的影响。最后，我建议调查气候变化对农村和城市生计的影响之间的差异，特别关注健康和营养结果。调查农村和城市地区的不同影响将有助于了解气候变化对农村-城市移徙和城市化的潜在影响。天气冲击将主要作为过去偏离正常气象条件的累积效应，使用帕尔默干旱严重程度指数（PDSI）来衡量。这些数据将与按空间分列的个人层面数据相匹配，这些数据衡量了许多国家和年份的政治和社会经济成果，即来自人口与健康调查和非洲晴雨表。在方法论上，我采用了来自自然实验文献的计量经济学技术来识别因果效应。首先，该项目利用极端天气事件作为一种手段，以提高我们对气候变化对经济和政治发展的中长期影响的认识。第二，天气冲击作为自然实验，以实现计量经济学识别和获得因果估计，以研究与经济和政治发展有关的更一般的问题。特别是，拟议的工作可有助于更好地理解（a）经济发展与民主之间的关系，（B）贫穷与人力资本发展之间的相互关系，以及（c）贫穷与移徙之间的联系。

Climate change, the human-caused rise in average global temperatures, has significant effects on crop yields and on livestock, and consequently on nutrition, health, and poverty in most parts of the world. Indirect effects attributed to climate change include social outcomes such as political instability and conflict. Low-income countries are particularly prone to suffer these negative consequences. Understanding the economic and social effects of climate change is an essential first step for designing policies and institutions to deal with these effects. The overarching goal of this project is therefore to expand the empirical knowledge base regarding the economic and political effects of climate change in less developed countries. Climate change is accompanied by shifts in weather patterns and an increase in extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods. The immediate goal of this project is to contribute to a better understanding of the effects of extreme weather events in three important domains. First, I will study the effect on political attitudes. This analysis will speak to the possible danger that climate change poses for destabilizing democratic regimes and strengthening authoritarian governments. Second, I plan to analyze the effect of weather shocks on cognitive ability. The analysis will contribute to a better understanding of the effects on human capital more generally. Finally, I propose to investigate differences between the effects of climate change on rural and urban livelihoods, with a particular focus on health and nutrition outcomes. Investigating heterogeneous impacts in rural and urban areas will help to understand potential implications of climate change for rural-urban migration and urbanization. Weather shocks will primarily be measured as the accumulated effect of past deviations from normal meteorological conditions, using the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). These data will be matched with spatially disaggregated individual-level data that measure political and socioeconomic outcomes across a large number of countries and years, namely from DHS and Afrobarometer. Methodologically, I employ econometric techniques from the natural experiments literature to identify causal effects.The broader objectives of this project are the following. First, the project uses extreme weather events as a means to improve our understanding of the effects of climate change on economic and political development in the medium to long term. Second, the weather shocks serve as natural experiments to achieve econometric identification and to obtain causal estimates to study more general questions related to economic and political development. In particular, the proposed work can contribute towards a better understanding of (a) the relationship between economic development and democracy, (b) the interrelationship between poverty and human capital development, and (c) the connection between poverty and migration.