Research

Vegetables are vital for human nutrition, but little is known about the price responses to temperature extremes. Our investigation leverages daily pricing of ** vegetable varieties across ** key Chinese markets, analyzing the interplay between temperature fluctuations and market prices over time. We found that extreme temperatures—both hot and cold—prompt price volatility, often decreasing during heatwaves and increasing during cold spells. However, impacts vary across climatic zones: vegetables from warmer regions are particularly sensitive to cold, whereas those from colder regions are comparably more resilient. Our data suggests that vegetables with longer shelf lives or higher market values display marked resilience to temperature extremes, contrasting with the vulnerability of perishable and lower-cost vegetables. Forward projections indicate that without intervention, ongoing climate scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 will likely intensify vegetable price fluctuations by this century's end. However, overall and region-specific climate adaptability could substantially alleviate the influence of climate change on vegetable pricing, ensuring economic and nutritional stability.

Rainfall affects productivity in many ways. Compared to temperature anomalies, the impacts of precipitation anomalies have been understudied, with existing evidence at the macro level. By combining ground station-level climate data and micro-data from half a million manufacturing firms in China, we uncover that rainfall negatively impacts firms’ productivity, with the most significant negative impacts concentrated in extremely heavy rainfall anomalies. Labor-intensive, low-tech, or less productive firms and those located in rainy regions are vulnerable to rainfall extremes. Our estimates are large enough to explain previously observed output losses in cross-country panels. We uncover four primary channels through which manufacturing firms experience productivity loss: agriculture intermediate inputs, labor inputs, transportation disruption and input reallocation. Additionally, we identify firm level increase in non-productive costs and firm entry/exit as effective mitigation strategies, and country-level infrastructure construction including anti-flood dam and improved road infrastructure and drainage systems. Utilizing the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways Scenarios (SSPs), we estimate the future impact of rainfall on productivity in a cost-benefit analysis. Our projections indicate a substantial output loss of 2.4-14.9 billion CNY by 2100, due to the increase in extreme rainfall events under each scenario with different implementation of environmental policies. These findings are significant in explaining the macro-level effects of rainfall.