ZEF Public Lecture: Institutions and Global Crop Yields
June 29, 2023 | 13:30 h - 14:30 h
We'd like to invite you to ZEF's Public Lecture!
Topic: "Institutions and Global Crop Yields"
Speaker: Prof. David Wuepper (Head of Land Economics Group and Full Professor at the Institute for Food and Resource Economics (ILR) in the University of Bonn)
The lecture will be held in hybrid mode, so you are also welcome to join us online via Zoom: https://uni-bonn.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5csfuuqrT0uEtUKiklaIro3cZZO1mX0wavj
Abstract
We estimate annual discontinuities in remotely-sensed crop yields at all global land borders and link them to changes in the economic freedom index by the Fraser Institute, a country-level measure of institutional quality. Each point of the ten-point index increases the discontinuity by 2.2% over the next five years, highlighting that institutional reforms have the potential to close some of the observed crop yield gap. Three subcategories are consistently significant: credit market regulation, inflation, and the top marginal tax rate. There is suggestive evidence that higher average yields are achieved through mechanization as indicated by an earlier planting date, but there is no change to yield variability. The same reforms also lead to cropland expansion through deforestation.
Biography:
David Wuepper recently joined the Institute for Food and Resource Economics (ILR) at the University of Bonn as a full professor and the head of the Land Economics Group. Wuepper completed his doctorate in agricultural economics at the TU Munich, Germany. He then went on to work as a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Agricultural Economics Department in the Technical University of Munich, and, most recently, at the Department of Environmental Systems Science and Dep. of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zürich, Switzerland. Before joining the University of Bonn, he held the position of interim professor of quantitative agricultural economics at Humboldt University in Berlin. Wuepper focuses on land policy and agricultural behavioral economics. His prior research has examined farmers’ risk tolerance and the impact of climate change on food markets.
