Weather anomalies and comparative advantages in emerging and developing economies: A climate vulnerability assessment

2026/07/17 by Jair N. Ojeda-Joya, Rémi Stellian, Jenny P. Danna-Buitrago
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Social Sciences · #Agricultural risk and resilience #Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration #Climate change impacts on agriculture

paper · doi:10.1016/j.strueco.2026.07.003

openalex publication_date 2026/07/17 · openalex created_date 2026/07/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23

Abstract

GDP, income, and employment are commonly identified as sources of climate vulnerability. Given the context of globalization, comparative advantages constitute an additional source of climate vulnerability. This paper proposes a replicable assessment of the exposure and sensitivity dimensions of climate vulnerability through the short-run negative impacts of weather anomalies on comparative advantages in the Global South. Weather anomalies are defined as annual deviations from long-term values in temperature and precipitation. Comparative advantages are measured using enhanced Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) indexes based on trade and GDP patterns. RCA indexes and weather anomalies are combined into dynamic panel data models that control for structural and time-varying factors. Estimation relies on a two-step bias-corrected method of moments. Based on a sample of multiple products and countries in 1995-2021, findings show that climate vulnerability affects products beyond agriculture and countries beyond tropical regions, informing product-specific and country-level adaptation strategies in the Global South.

Citations

• The GDP-Temperature relationship: Implications for climate change damages
• A finite sample correction for the variance of linear efficient two-step GMM estimators
• Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models
• Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations
• The roads ahead: Narratives for shared socioeconomic pathways describing world futures in the 21st century

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