The Economic Impact of the Little Ice Age

27 Pages Posted: 19 May 2010

See all articles by Morgan Kelly

Morgan Kelly

University College Dublin (UCD) - Department of Economics

Cormac O'Grada

University College Dublin (UCD)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: May 2010

Abstract

Abstract We investigate by how much the Little Ice Age reduced the harvests on which pre-industrial Europeans relied for survival. We find that weather strongly affected crop yields, but can find little evidence that western Europe experienced long swings or structural breaks in climate. Instead, annual summer temperature reconstructions between the fourteenth and twentieth centuries behave as almost independent draws from a distribution with a constant mean but time varying volatility; while winter temperatures behave similarly until the late nineteenth century when they rise markedly, consistent with anthropogenic global warming. Our results suggest that the existing consensus about a Little Ice Age in western Europe stems from a Slutsky effect, where the standard climatological practice of smoothing data prior to analysis induces spurious cyclicality in uncorrelated data.

Keywords: Little Ice Age, Slutsky effect

JEL Classification: N50

Suggested Citation

Kelly, Morgan and O'Grada, Cormac, The Economic Impact of the Little Ice Age (May 2010). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP7816, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1611512

Morgan Kelly (Contact Author)

University College Dublin (UCD) - Department of Economics ( email )

Belfield
Dublin 4, Dublin 4
Ireland
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+353 1 283 0068 (Fax)

Cormac O'Grada

University College Dublin (UCD) ( email )

Belfield
Dublin 4, 4
Ireland

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