TY - JOUR
T1 - Climate change, migration, and regional economic impacts in the United States
AU - Fan, Qin
AU - Fisher-Vanden, Karen
AU - Klaiber, H. Allen
N1 - Funding Information:
Qin Fan (corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics, California State University Fresno, 5245 N. Backer, MS/PB20 Fresno, CA 93740, USA (qfan@ csufresno.edu). Karen Fisher-Vanden is professor of Environmental and Resource Economics in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA ([email protected]). H. Allen Klaiber is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA ([email protected]). This work was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research Program, Integrated Assessment Research Program, grant no. DE-SC0005171. We thank Christopher Timmins for providing detailed and very useful comments on the early version of this
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 by The Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
PY - 2018/7/1
Y1 - 2018/7/1
N2 - Recent studies predict that climate change will lead to a redistribution of population across the United States, as people choose to locate in regions less susceptible to extreme climate. However, these studies ignore the fact that migration will be dampened by changes in wage rates and housing prices as a result of migration. In this study, we apply a novel approach of linking a residential sorting model to an interregional computable general equilibrium model of the United States to capture wage and housing price feedbacks to assess the economic impacts of climate-change-induced migration. We find that endogenizing wages significantly dampens migration patterns. However, there are significant positive impacts on gross regional product and consumption in the Northeast,West, and California at the expense of the South and Midwest. In addition, wage effects are found to dominate housing price and climate effects, which results in larger welfare changes.
AB - Recent studies predict that climate change will lead to a redistribution of population across the United States, as people choose to locate in regions less susceptible to extreme climate. However, these studies ignore the fact that migration will be dampened by changes in wage rates and housing prices as a result of migration. In this study, we apply a novel approach of linking a residential sorting model to an interregional computable general equilibrium model of the United States to capture wage and housing price feedbacks to assess the economic impacts of climate-change-induced migration. We find that endogenizing wages significantly dampens migration patterns. However, there are significant positive impacts on gross regional product and consumption in the Northeast,West, and California at the expense of the South and Midwest. In addition, wage effects are found to dominate housing price and climate effects, which results in larger welfare changes.
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U2 - 10.1086/697168
DO - 10.1086/697168
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85047363917
SN - 2333-5955
VL - 5
SP - 643
EP - 671
JO - Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists
JF - Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists
IS - 3
ER -
