Assessing the impacts of temperature variations on rice yield in China

Using a unique county-level panel on single-season paddy rice yield and daily weather outcomes from 1996 to 2009, we examined the impacts of weather variations on paddy rice yield in China. We have five key findings: (i) in contrast to nearly all previous studies focusing on rice production in tropical and subtropical regions, we discovered that higher daily minimum temperature during the vegetative stage increased paddy rice yield; (ii) consistent with previous assessments, we found that higher daily maximum temperature during the vegetative and ripening stages reduced paddy rice yield; (iii) the impacts of sunshine duration and rainfall on paddy rice yield differed across the plant’s growth stages; (iv) estimated weather effects on yield differed by rice variety; and (v) weather variations caused a net economic loss of $17.4–53.0 million to China’s single-season paddy rice sector during the sample period, depending on econometric estimation strategies.