Essays on the impact of climate change and determinants of climatological damages

Abstract

My dissertation comprises of a collection of four individual papers studying climate change impacts. I use econometrics to quantify the impact of climate change and variability on crop yields and health, and analyzing the socioeconomic determinants of climatological disasters. Agriculture is extremely sensitive to changes in the climatic factors while climate change is likely to severely affect human health in fundamental ways. At the same time, climate related extreme events not only cause monetary damages but also directly endangers human lives. While a great deal of focus in the existing literature has been on aggregated global damages, my goal is also to examine if there have been differentiated or uneven distribution of impacts across countries.