We are very pleased to announce that Professor Juan Pablo Rud is among the two winners of this year’s IZA’s Award for “Innovative Research in the Economics of Climate Change” (IRECC).

In the paper "Climate Change and Political Participation: Evidence from India", Juan Pablo Rud, Amrit Amirapu and Irma Clots-Figueras provide new evidence about the ways in which political agents in developing countries (including both voters and candidates) may respond to climate change via political channels.

The authors study the effects of extreme temperature shocks on political participation using data from Indian elections between 2009 and 2017. Taking advantage of localized, high-frequency data on land surface temperatures, they find that areas with greater cumulative exposure to extreme temperatures experience an increase in voter turnout and a change in the composition of the pool of candidates who stand for election. As a consequence, electoral outcomes are affected. The results are driven by the negative effect of climate change on agricultural productivity. First, the results are strongest in areas with a larger rural population. Second, there is a non-monotonic relationship between temperatures and turnout which closely mirrors the relationship between temperatures and agricultural productivity. Also, following temperature shocks, winning candidates are more likely to have an agricultural background. Finally, politicians with an agricultural background invest more in irrigation, which mitigates the effects of high temperatures, on both agricultural production and on turnout.