Resumen de Assaigs sobre geografia econòmica, desenvolupament i canvi climàtic
This doctoral thesis answer questions related to the spatial impacts of climate change on economic outcomes. Composed by three independent chapters, it contributes to a literature at the intersection of economic development, economic geography, international trade, and climate change.
In Chapter 1, "The Power of Markets: Impact of Desert Locust Invasions on Child Health", I provide reduced-form evidence of the importance of (access to) markets on the transmission of climate change-led agricultural shocks to human capital accumulation in low-income agricultural economies. Overall, it argues for the importance of addressing local market reactions to this type of agricultural shock when designing public policy. It also conveys clear evidence of the vulnerability of agricultural, low-income economies, to short-term shocks induced by climate change. Hence, it motivates the subsequent chapters, in which I study the long-run economic reactions to and consequences of climate change.
In particular, in Chapter 2, "Climate Change and Migration: the case of Africa", I study the potential economic costs and migration responses to climate change in the context of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) during the next decades. For that, I develop a quantitative spatial framework that captures the role of trade networks and agricultural suitability on the distribution of population and GDP accounting for endogenous adjustments of crop choice and trade. I combine it with detailed geospatial data from SSA to simulate the impact of climate change using forecasts of agricultural productivity in 2080 from FAO.
My results suggest that climate change could lead to major migration flows within and across SSA countries, with substantial economic losses associated with it. Moreover, the capacity of adjusting the production mix across different sectors (crops and/or non-agricultural) or high access to markets partially mitigates the impacts of climate change in terms of population outflows. Finally, a policy experiment related to technology adoption in agriculture shows that the adoption of modern inputs in that sector could reverse considerably the negative impacts of climate change.
My thesis is concluded with Chapter 3, "Local Sectoral Specialization in a Warming World", where I study the evolution of the geographical distribution of the world's economy and climate in a setup where both elements are endogenous to one another. In particular, I embed a mapping between the evolution of economic activity, carbon emissions, and global warming into a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model where spatial innovation drives the dynamics of the evolution of productivities and growth.
By simulating the evolution of the world economy for the next centuries, I find a much higher concentration of agricultural activity in northern latitudes (e.g. Siberia and Northern China) if compared to a scenario without global warming. Moreover, in aggregate terms, climate change leads to different patterns of the evolution of sectoral--productivities, economic growth, and specialization into agriculture and urban sectors, in line with some of the results from Chapter 2. A policy experiment related to trade costs shows that higher frictions to trade reallocate production and factors close to the demand, by reducing the comparative advantage in more peripheral regions of the globe.
Overall, my doctoral thesis provides clear evidence of the spatial differences in the reactions to (and consequences of) climate change throughout the globe. It also argues firmly for the importance of trade as a key economic mechanism behind the transmission of this sort of shock to economic outcomes. In the present times of fast globalization, integration of markets, and expansion of trade networks, my thesis shows that bringing the most isolated markets closer to the global trade networks can have a key role in mitigating the future consequences of climate change.
