It's rare that one admits defeat in an academic debate...especially one over climate change in the American Economic Review

(26) The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Agricultural Output and Random Fluctuations in Weather: Comment

Anthony C. Fisher, W. Michael Hanemann, Michael J. Roberts and Wolfram Schlenker

In a series of studies employing a variety of approaches, we have found that the potential impact of climate change on US agriculture is likely negative. Deschênes and Greenstone (2007) report dramatically different results based on regressions of agricultural profits and yields on weather variables. The divergence is explained by (1) missing and incorrect weather and climate data in their study; (2) their use of older climate change projections rather than the more recent and less optimistic projections from the Fourth Assessment Report; and (3) difficulties in their profit measure due to the confounding effects of storage.

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(27) The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Agricultural Output and Random Fluctuations in Weather: Reply

Olivier Deschênes and Michael Greenstone

Fisher et al. (2012)––henceforth, FHRS––have uncovered coding and data errors in our paper, Deschênes and Greenstone (2007), henceforth, DG. We acknowledge and are embarrassed by these mistakes. We are grateful to FHRS for uncovering them. We hope that this Reply will also contribute to advancing the literature on the vital question of the impact of climate change on the US agricultural sector.