No abstract

Climate change is likely to affect economies not only through warming, but also via an increase in prolonged extreme events like heat waves. However, the impacts of heat waves on economic output are not well captured by standard empirical approaches that ignore when hot days occur. Using a global dataset spanning 1979–2016, we show agricultural losses from past heat waves are up to an order of magnitude larger than suggested by standard approaches. Combining these estimates with a suite of climate models implies that by the end of the century, climate damages in agriculture may be 5–10 times larger than is predicted by a focus on mean temperature shifts alone. These findings have important implications for targeting and evaluating climate adaptation efforts.

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on 'Structural transformation and inclusive growth in Vietnam'.

Using novel adult skills surveys, this article analyses cross‐country patterns in skill achievement and labour market returns, comparing the outcomes for a subset of developing countries with the results previously found for high‐income economies. Apart from displaying lower average cognitive skills, developing countries also exhibit wider disparities in levels of skills by subgroups of educational attainment, gender, and parental education. Meanwhile, baseline estimates of returns to skills reveal that a one‐standard deviation increase in literacy skills is associated with an earnings increase of 14.6% in developing countries, which is statistically indistinguishable from the average returns of 17.7 estimated for developed countries. Nonetheless, there is considerable heterogeneity in the returns across developing countries, with the lowest estimates found in Armenia and Ukraine at 2% (not statistically significant) and 6%, respectively, and the highest reported in Kenya at above 30%. Differences in the type of employment opportunities and the degree of employment selection in these labour markets are important determinants of the observed gap in returns. International comparisons of returns should take this into consideration.

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on 'Structural transformation and inclusive growth in Vietnam'.