Michael Oppenheimer
Department of Geosciences
Woodrow Wilson School
Princeton University
448 Robertson Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544-1013
E-Mail: 
Institutional Affiliation: Princeton University
NBER Working Papers and Publications
August 2018 | Evaluating the Economic Cost of Coastal Flooding
with Klaus Desmet, Robert E. Kopp, Scott A. Kulp, Dávid Krisztián Nagy, Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, Benjamin H. Strauss: w24918
Sea-level rise and ensuing permanent coastal inundation will cause spatial shifts in population and economic activity over the next 200 years. Using a highly spatially disaggregated, dynamic model of the world economy that accounts for the dynamics of migration, trade, and innovation, this paper estimates the consequences of probabilistic projections of local sea-level changes under different emissions scenarios. Under an intermediate greenhouse gas concentration trajectory, permanent flooding is projected to reduce global real GDP by an average of 0.19% in present value terms, with welfare declining by 0.24% as people move to places with less attractive amenities. By the year 2200 a projected 1.46% of world population will be displaced. Losses in many coastal localities are more than an o... |
January 2012 | Climate Change, Crop Yields, and Internal Migration in the United States
with Shuaizhang Feng, Wolfram Schlenker: w17734
We investigate the link between agricultural productivity and net migration in the United States using a county-level panel for the most recent period of 1970-2009. In rural counties of the Corn Belt, we find a statistically significant relationship between changes in net outmigration and climate-driven changes in crop yields, with an estimated semi-elasticity of about -0.17, i.e., a 1% decrease in yields leads to a 0.17% net reduction of the population through migration. This effect is primarily driven by young adults. We do not detect a response for senior citizens, nor for the general population in eastern counties outside the Corn Belt. Applying this semi-elasticity to predicted yield changes under the B2 scenario of the Hadley III model, we project that, holding other factors constan... |
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