Assessing the Impact of Weather Risk on Land Use Intensity: A Nonstationary and Dynamic Panel Modeling Approach

Climatic variation, or weather risk, plays an important role in production agriculture. Using district-level panels for 42 years from India and nonstationary and dynamic panel estimation procedures, we estimate the impact of weather risk on land use intensity. Our results suggest the impact of weather risk on land use intensity is negative in the short run. Additionally, we find a positive effect of share of high yielding varieties production and share of irrigated acreage on land use intensity. Our study also indicates that the impact of weather risk on land use intensity has diminished in the post–market reform period (after 1990).