title: Climate change impacts on crop yield: evidence from China.
abstract: When estimating climate change impact on crop yield, a typical assumption is constant elasticity of yield with respect to a climate variable even though the elasticity may be inconstant. After estimating both constant and inconstant elasticities with respect to temperature and precipitation based on provincial panel data in China 1980-2008, our results show that during that period, the temperature change contributes positively to total yield growth by 1.3% and 0.4% for wheat and rice, respectively, but negatively by 12% for maize. The impacts of precipitation change are marginal. We also compare our estimates with other studies and highlight the implications of the inconstant elasticities for crop yield, harvest and food security. We conclude that climate change impact on crop yield would not be an issue in China if positive impacts of other socio-economic factors continue in the future.
authors.affiliation: Center for International Climate and Environmental Research - Oslo (CICERO), Norway. Electronic address: taoyuan.wei@cicero.uio.no.
authors.forename: Taoyuan
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Center for International Climate and Environmental Research - Oslo (CICERO), Norway; Department of Economics, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA. Electronic address: todd.cherry@cicero.uio.no.
authors.forename: Todd L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Cherry
authors.affiliation: Center for International Climate and Environmental Research - Oslo (CICERO), Norway. Electronic address: solveig.glomsrod@cicero.uio.no.
authors.forename: Solveig
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Glomrød
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Physics and Atmospheric Chemistry, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China. Electronic address: zhangty@mail.iap.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Tianyi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002681:China; D057231:Climate Change; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000254:growth & development*; D005523:Food Supply
keywords: Agriculture; China; Climate change impact; Crop yield; Food security; Non-linear elasticity