About

Pierre Mérel is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis. His research focuses on industrial organization, mathematical programming, air quality, climate change, and agriculture. He is involved in applied microeconomics, with specific interests in consumer and producer behavior, and the economic analysis of resource and environmental policies. His work contributes to understanding the economic impacts of environmental issues and policy interventions related to agriculture and climate change.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Natural resource economics
• Econometrics
• Economics
• Climatology
• Ecology

Selected publications

• The impact of land use on water quality: Evidence from California wells

  Journal of Environmental Economics and Management · 2026-01-20

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Sufficient statistics for climate change counterfactuals

  Journal of Environmental Economics and Management · 2024 · 14 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Econometrics
  • Economics
  • Environmental science
  PublisherDOI

• The Short-Run Impacts of Immigration on Native Workers: A Sectoral Approach

  WORLD SCIENTIFIC eBooks · 2024-02-28

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Labor and Human Capital

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Double cropping as an adaptation to climate change in the United States

  American Journal of Agricultural Economics · 2024-08-21 · 15 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract A warming climate expands the frost‐free season, plausibly allowing for increased cropping intensity in temperate regions. This paper assesses the potential of multiple cropping to offset the projected negative effects of climate change on agricultural yields in the United States. We use cross‐sectional variation in observed land cover, soil characteristics, and climate to estimate farmers' propensity to double‐crop winter wheat with soybeans. Our estimates imply that under current economic conditions, a 3°C warming would result in an increase of 2.1 percentage points in the share of current soybean area double cropped, primarily driven by expansions in cooler regions. A fixed‐effects panel model of county yields further indicates that yields of double‐cropped soybeans are about 12% lower than those of single‐cropped soybeans. Accounting for changes in cropping intensity and attendant effects on soybean yields, we project that at current prices, a 3°C warming would induce a shift in cropping intensity that increases revenue from soy systems by 1.3% overall, offsetting only a small fraction of the revenue impacts of predicted yield declines.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Policy-induced expansion of organic farmland: implications for food prices and welfare

  European Review of Agricultural Economics · 2023-07-05 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Public policies increasingly support the expansion of organic agriculture as part of a menu of food and environmental initiatives. A little-studied yet crucial element of such expansion, especially in light of scientific evidence on lower yields of organic crops, is its impact on overall food production and food prices, especially for poorer households. In this paper, we first establish a positive empirical relationship between countries’ propensity to produce and consume organic foods and their per-capita income. Such correlation suggests that, even if rich countries’ consumers can benefit from an increase in the organic farmland share, poor countries’ consumers would likely face higher conventional food prices. We then develop and calibrate a model of world food demand and supply to assess the implications of a policy-driven expansion in organic farmland. Our results for four major grains and oilseeds show that raising the organic cropland share in rich countries from 3 to 15 per cent increases food prices in poor countries by up to 6.3 per cent, with central values of 1.2–2.5 per cent, and a commensurate reduction in consumer welfare. Model parameterisations indicate that farmers in poor countries benefit from higher crop prices, while consumers in rich countries are largely unaffected and sometimes benefit. In all cases, poor countries’ consumers bear most of the distortion burden. In our preferred parameterisation, a 3 per cent increase in cropland in rich countries is needed to offset the food price increase in poor countries.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Farm labor supply and fruit and vegetable production

  American Journal of Agricultural Economics · 2022-08-15 · 22 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract This study provides econometric estimates of the effects of reductions in farm labor supply on the production of hand‐harvested fruits and vegetables. Using crop production and employment data from California counties, we estimate panel regressions linking farm employment to crop production outcomes. Because we exploit variation in equilibrium employment, as opposed to exogenous variation in the labor supply curve, we use an equilibrium displacement model to identify the most likely sources of estimation bias and conclude that our regression estimates should be interpreted as upper bounds for the effect of interest. Our results indicate that a 10% decrease in the farm labor supply (in terms of the number of workers) causes at most a 4.2% reduction in production in the top 10 fruit and vegetable producing counties. Production effects are channeled primarily through a reduction in harvested acreage, although we also uncover some effects on yield.

  PublisherDOI

• Climate Econometrics: Can the Panel Approach Account for Long‐Run Adaptation?

  American Journal of Agricultural Economics · 2021-03-14 · 14 citations

  preprintOpen access1st author

  The panel approach with fixed effects and nonlinear weather effects has become a popular method to uncover weather impacts on economic outcomes, but its ability to capture long‐run climatic adaptation remains unclear. Building upon a framework proposed by McIntosh and Schlenker (2006), this paper identifies empirical conditions under which the nonlinear panel approach can approximate a long‐run response to climate. When these conditions fail, the obtained relationship may still be interpretable as a weighted average of underlying short‐run and long‐run responses. We use this decomposition to revisit recently published climate impact estimates. For spatially large panels, the estimated temperature–outcome relationship mostly reflects the long‐run climatic response; this is not so for precipitation. We find some evidence of long‐run climatic adaptation for crop yield outcomes in the United States and France.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How big is the “lemons” problem? Historical evidence from French wines

  European Economic Review · 2021-07-12 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Environmental Policy in General Equilibrium: New Insights from a Canonical Model

  Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists · 2021-07-14

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This paper derives the incidence of a pollution tax in a stylized general equilibrium framework, building on previous work by Fullerton and Heutel. Using the CPI as numeraire, we show that tax incidence is a simpler problem than previously thought and that general insights can be derived without the need to restrict the parameter space. In addition, the counterintuitive possibility that an increase in the tax could increase the pollution level vanishes. The choice of the CPI as numeraire is further justified by the fact that environmental taxes, notably carbon taxes, are typically indexed on inflation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Replication Data for: Environmental Policy in General Equilibrium: New Insights from a Canonical Model

  Harvard Dataverse · 2021-06-16

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  This code seeks to replicate results in Table 2 and Table 3 of Fullerton & Heutel (F&H 2007 JPubE) and generate the tables in Garnache and Merel (JAERE). The code also provides support for various claims made throughout our paper and its online appendix.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Cloé Garnache

  41 shared

• Richard J. Sexton

  United States Naval Observatory

  25 shared

• Matthew Gammans

  12 shared

• Juhwan Lee

  11 shared

• Gary D. Libecap

  10 shared

• Johan Six

  ETH Zurich

  10 shared

• Ariel Ortiz-­Bobea

  Cornell University

  9 shared

• Fujin Yi

  Zhejiang University

  9 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Agricultural and Resource Economics

  University of California, Davis

  2007

• Other

  École Nationale du Génie Rural, des Eaux et des Forêts, Paris, France

  2001

• Other

  École Polytechnique, Paris, France

  1999