UC Berkeley

The global climate is changing, and it is incumbent on researchers to determine both the costs and benefits of slowing this change. This dissertation contributes to the study of both of these goals. One chapter examines the effect that measurement error in control variables can have on the empirical estimation of the relationship between economic variables and temperature, using the case of maize in the United States of America. This chapter suggests that measurement error in precipitation could bias temperature coefficients away from zero, in this context. One chapter studies the effect of weather variables on the world's largest livestock industry, dairy, in the New Zealand context, and finds large and different effects of weather in summer and winter, and finds that bottom-line conclusions are sensitive to the assumption that the effects do not vary by season. Finally, with a co-author, one chapter studies the potential for a low carbon fuel source that uses a proven, mature, technology, sugarcane ethanol, and finds that a substantial proportion of carbon-intensive fuel could be displaced, under modest subsidies, suggesting that some fossil fuels can be replaced with low abatement costs.