Land prices and climate conditions: Evaluating the greenhouse damage for the German agricultural sector

Using an exhaustive panel dataset of the German agricultural sector, this paper is evaluating the relationship between climate conditions and land prices. The main advantage of this so-called hedonic approach is the consideration of the full range of adaptation options to the climatic environment. A Box-Cox form is employed to allow for very flexible relationships between land prices, warmth, moisture, and different socioeconomic variables. In a second step, the estimated results are used to forecast the impact of global climate change on the farming sector. The results show that a change of the temperature level has stronger impacts than a change of rainfall. Using a greenhouse warming scenario, German farmers are expected to be winners of climate change at least in the short run. Maximum gains are estimated with a temperature increase of +1.0°C against the current levels. Should the temperature increase surpass 1.8°C, however, the impact on the farming sector is clearly negative.