ERC Consolidator Grant
2024-2029
Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries
Project description
Adjustment mechanisms to confront climate change
The world is grappling with the rapid changes in our climate. Rising temperatures threaten to diminish agricultural productivity in developing nations, leaving them with uncertain paths for adaptation. In this context, the ERC-funded ClimateAdapt project will explore two potential adjustment mechanisms. The first involves shifting economic activity away from agriculture and into non-agricultural sectors, fostering a reallocation of the workforce. However, this path may not be viable for regions with limited manufacturing productivity. The second mechanism involves migration to areas with better employment opportunities. With newly digitised data, ClimateAdapt aims to provide empirical evidence on how labour and capital market frictions shape the response to climate change.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
This work is supported by ERC grant ClimateAdapt, Project 101088060.
EU programme: Horizon Europe
€ 1 565 511,00
Coordinated by Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona
Objectives of the project
The fast pace at which the earth climate is changing is one of the major challenges of our time. Rising temperatures are expected to reduce agricultural productivity in developing countries, which face uncertain adaptation paths. The theoretical literature highlights two potential adjustment mechanisms: the reallocation of economic activity towards non-agricultural sectors or towards colder regions. In the first case, lower agricultural productivity generates a shift in comparative advantage towards non-agricultural sectors and a reallocation of workers from agriculture towards manufacturing and services. However, this path might not be feasible for regions with low manufacturing productivity. In this second case, the lack of local employment opportunities can lead to migration towards other areas. There is a rich theoretical and quantitative literature studying the relative importance of each margin of adjustment. However, these predictions are subject to a large level of uncertainty due to the lack of direct empirical evidence. In particular, we lack evidence on how labor and capital market frictions shape the adjustment to climate change. We are now in the position to produce this evidence. The last decade has been unusually hot, leading to many persistent extreme weather events in tropical countries, which triggered adaptation responses. In this project, we use newly digitized administrative reports on extreme weather events occurred in Brazil during the last two decades, a new meteorological measure of excess dryness relative to historical averages, and detailed social security and credit registry data to estimate the effects of climate change on i) the local economy of affected areas, ii) the magnitude of the labor and capital flows it generates and iii) factor allocation across sectors and firms in destination regions.
Team members / collaborators
Principal Investigator: Paula Bustos (ICREA-UPF)
Researchers: Christoph Albert (Collegio Carlo Alberto), Gabriel Garber (Central Bank of Brazil), and Jacopo Ponticelli (Northwestern University)
Research Assistants: Franziska Schwingeler (PhD student, UPF), Luca Looser (PhD student, UPF), Simone Cigna (PhD student, UPF)