Hannah Kim

I study how weather risk shapes perennial crop allocation among Ethiopian smallholders choosing between coffee, a relatively profitable but weather-sensitive crop, and khat, a more weather-tolerant alternative. I develop a portfolio model that treats perennial crops as long-lived assets and links land allocation to expected profits and profit variance. Using four rounds of Ethiopia’s LSMS household panel matched with ERA5 weather data, I estimate crop-specific weather-profit relationships and apply them to recent local weather histories to construct weather-based measures of expected profitability and profit variance. Coffee profits respond more strongly to weather than khat profits. Higher weather-induced variance in coffee profits predicts a lower coffee share in the following survey round, while higher khat profit variance and lower expected khat profit predict a higher coffee share. These patterns are consistent with farmers adjusting perennial crop portfolios in response to weather-driven changes in expected returns and risk.

This paper estimates the causal effects of prenatal and early-life extreme weather exposure on child nutritional status across 56+ low- and middle-income countries, linking ERA5 weather data to DHS child-level data. Extreme heat exacerbates the risk of stunting, underweight, and wasting, with effects strongest among toddlers aged 12–36 months; drought increases underweight risk and heavy rainfall raises wasting, particularly in rural households.

This paper estimates the economic impacts of wildfire exposure using county-level panel data in the United States. It constructs a LitPop-weighted measure of wildfire exposure from MODIS burned area data and applies distributed lag models to capture wildfire impacts. The results show limited population responses, declines in unemployment consistent with post-fire reconstruction, and heterogeneous effects across high- and low-fire-frequency regions.