Climate Shocks and Exports
利用国际贸易数据，研究气候冲击对经济活动的影响，发现高温降低贫困国家的人均GDP增长率，并分析贸易数据如何揭示受影响的具体行业。
This paper uses international trade data to examine the effects of climate shocks on economic activity. At the aggregate level, Melissa Dell, Benjamin F. Jones, and Benjamin A. Olken (2008) (hereafter, DJO) have demonstrated that higher temperatures in a given year reduce the growth rate of GDP per capita, but only in poor countries. The analysis of trade data in this paper builds on that finding, with three principal motivations. First, international trade links the fortunes of countries, providing potentially important conduits for geographically limited climatic impacts to have global economic effects. Second, international trade data is the best available source for identifying economic activity worldwide separately by narrowly defined sectors. Examining international trade data, one can thus say more precisely what sectors are affected by climatic changes. Finally, the trade data, collected by the importing country, provides a check on the potentially low-quality national accounts data provided by the home country.