A Ricardian Analysis of the Impact of Climate Change on European Agriculture

Abstract

This research estimates the impact of climate on European agriculture using a continental scale Ricardian analysis. Climate, soil, geography and regional socio-economic variables are matched with farm level data from 41,030 farms across Western Europe. We demonstrate that a median quantile regression outperforms OLS given farm level data. The results suggest that European farms are slightly more sensitive to warming than American farms with impacts from 5 to 32 % by 2100 depending on the climate scenario. Farms in Southern Europe are predicted to be particularly sensitive, suffering losses of 5 to 9 % per degree Celsius.