Climate change, sea level rise, and the agricultural revolution
Authors: Ridhika Mishra, Richard S. J. Tol
Abstract
We test various hypotheses for the invention and spread of agriculture: higher temperatures, increased seasonality, carbon dioxide fertilization, sea level rise, and technological progress on the extensive margin. We successfully replicate Matranga (QJE 2024). His seasonality hypothesis survives alternative data, estimators, and competing hypotheses. Population density played a role in the invention of agriculture, while spatial diffusion was important for its spread. Sea level rise and climate change had a minor effect on the population density of the areas that first adopted agriculture. Extrapolating a logit model for the invention of agriculture, some now-submerged areas in the Persian Gulf, Mediterranean, and Yellow Sea were suitable for early agriculture. Over time, technological progress was the main factor in extending agriculture's extensive margin.
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Closest papers
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Climatic Fluctuations and the Diffusion of AgricultureQuamrul H. Ashraf, Stelios Michalopoulos · 2015 · Review of Economics and Statistics · cited 65 times · Not summarized yet
Climatic Fluctuations and the Diffusion of Agriculture tests how climatic volatility shaped the timing and spread of Neolithic farming.
Abstract
Abstract This research examines the climatic origins of the diffusion of Neolithic agriculture across countries and archaeological sites. The theory suggests that a foraging society's history of climatic shocks shaped the timing of its adoption of farming. Specifically, as long as climatic disturbances did not lead to a collapse of the underlying resource base, the rate at which hunter-gatherers were climatically propelled to experiment with their habitats determined the accumulation of tacit knowledge complementary to farming. Consistent with the proposed hypothesis, the empirical investigation demonstrates that, conditional on biogeographic endowments, climatic volatility has a hump-shaped…
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From Foraging to Farming: Explaining the Neolithic RevolutionJ. Weisdorf · 2003 · Journal of Economic Surveys · cited 60 times · Not summarized yet
From Foraging to Farming: Explaining the Neolithic Revolution addresses explanations for the transition to agriculture.
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A Bioeconomic View of the Neolithic Transition to AgricultureArthur J. Robson · 2010 · Canadian Journal of Economics · cited 24 times · Not summarized yet
A Bioeconomic View of the Neolithic Transition to Agriculture examines the transition from foraging to farming.
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Impact of Climate Dynamics and Agricultural Inputs on Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions in India: An ARDL Cointegration ApproachAaditya Jadhav, Abhishek Singh, Shrinivasa Dj et al. · 2026 · Journal of Agrometeorology · Not summarized yet
Impact of Climate Dynamics and Agricultural Inputs on Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions in India studies climate and agriculture in modern India, not farming’s origins.
Abstract
In India, where agriculture is both a foundation of the economy and a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, rising temperatures due to climate change are accelerating environmental degradation while simultaneously undermining the resilience of the agrarian sector. In this context, the present study examines the long-run relationship between agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, climate variables and agricultural inputs in India. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model technique is applied to time series data on six key variables from 1990 to 2021. The findings of the ARDL bound F-test confirmed the significant long-run cointegration among variables under consideration. Fur…
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Paleoeconomics: Climate Change and Economic Development in PrehistoryOla Olsson · 2024 · Paleoeconomics · cited 2 times · Not summarized yet
Paleoeconomics: Climate Change and Economic Development in Prehistory considers climate change and economic development in prehistory.
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Climate change, environmental regulations, and agricultural total factor productivity: implications for food production in emerging economiesAwais Ahmed Brohi, Waheed Ali, Yoshihisa Suzuki · 2026 · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Not summarized yet
Climate change, environmental regulations, and agricultural total factor productivity studies climate effects on food production in emerging economies.
Abstract
This study investigates the long-run impacts of climate change, environmental policy stringency (EPS), and agricultural total factor productivity (ATFP) on food production across selected emerging economies over the period 1990–2022. Second-generation econometric methods, robust to cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity, are employed to ensure methodological rigor. Using the Cross-Sectionally Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lag model alongside panel cointegration tests, the study establishes long-term relationships among the variables of interest. The results reveal that a 1% increase in average annual precipitation (APRE), ATFP, and EPS is associated with long-term increase…
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Understanding the impacts of crop diversification in the context of climate change: a machine learning approachGeorgios Giannarakis, Ilias Tsoumas, Stelios Neophytides et al. · 2023 · Machine Learning · cited 7 times · AI summary available
Understanding the impacts of crop diversification in the context of climate change studies how climate shapes the productivity effects of crop diversification.
Abstract
The concept of sustainable intensification in agriculture necessitates the implementation of management practices that prioritize sustainability without compromising productivity. However, the effects of such practices are known to depend on environmental conditions, and are therefore expected to change as a result of a changing climate. We study the impact of crop diversification on productivity in the context of climate change. We leverage heterogeneous Earth Observation data and contribute a data-driven approach based on causal machine learning for understanding how crop diversification impacts may change in the future. We apply this method to the country of Cyprus throughout a 4-year per…
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Climate, Agriculture and FoodAriel Ortiz-Bobea · 2021 · Handbook of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 5, pp. 3981-4073 (2021) · cited 4 times · AI summary available
Climate, Agriculture and Food surveys research methods and findings on climate impacts and adaptation in agriculture.
Abstract
Agriculture is arguably the most climate-sensitive sector of the economy. Growing concerns about anthropogenic climate change have increased research interest in assessing its potential impact on the sector and in identifying policies and adaptation strategies to help the sector cope with a changing climate. This chapter provides an overview of recent advancements in the analysis of climate change impacts and adaptation in agriculture with an emphasis on methods. The chapter provides an overview of recent research efforts addressing key conceptual and empirical challenges. The chapter also discusses practical matters about conducting research in this area and provides reproducible R code to …
Prior work it builds on
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The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population PressureClarence W. Olmstead, E. Boserup, Nicholas Kaldor · 1970 · Economic Geography · cited 3,184 times · Not summarized yet
The Conditions of Agricultural Growth examines agrarian change under population pressure, a broader concern related to agriculture’s development.
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High-resolution terrestrial climate, bioclimate and vegetation for the last 120,000 yearsR. Beyer, M. Krapp, A. Manica · 2019 · Scientific Data · cited 114 times · Not summarized yet
High-resolution terrestrial climate, bioclimate and vegetation for the last 120,000 years presents palaeoclimate and vegetation data used in the paper’s analysis.
Abstract
The variability of climate has profoundly impacted a wide range of macroecological processes in the Late Quaternary. Our understanding of these has greatly benefited from palaeoclimate simulations, however, high-quality reconstructions of ecologically relevant climatic variables have thus far been limited to a few selected time periods. Here, we present a 0.5° resolution bias-corrected dataset of global monthly temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, relative humidity and wind speed, 17 bioclimatic variables, annual net primary productivity, leaf area index and biomes, covering the last 120,000 years at a temporal resolution of 1,000–2,000 years. We combined medium-resolution HadCM3 climate…
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Human Origins and Evolution in a Malthusian EconomyA. Chu · 2025 · cited 2 times · Not summarized yet
Human Origins and Evolution in a Malthusian Economy concerns human evolution and population constraints, broader context for agricultural development.
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Long-term dynamic modeling of global population and built-up area in a spatially explicit way: HYDE 3.1K. Klein Goldewijk, A. Beusen, P. Janssen · 2010 · The Holocene · cited 622 times · Not summarized yet
Long-term dynamic modeling of global population and built-up area in a spatially explicit way provides the HYDE data used in the paper.
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Space geodesy constrains ice age terminal deglaciation: The global ICE‐6G_C (VM5a) modelW. Peltier, D. Argus, R. Drummond · 2015 · Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth · cited 1,283 times · Not summarized yet
Space geodesy constrains ice age terminal deglaciation presents the ICE-6G_C model used for the paper’s ice and sea-level analysis.
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Updated on 2 November 2026.