Impacts of Extreme Climate Events on Technical Efficiency in Vietnamese Agriculture

The aim of this study is to examine farm household-level impacts of weather extreme  events on Vietnamese rice technical efficiency. Vietnam is considered among the most vulnerable countries to climate change, and the Vietnamese economy is  highly dependent on rice production that is strongly affected by climate change. A stochastic frontier analysis is applied with census panel data and weather data  from 2010 to 2014 to estimate these impacts while controlling for both adaptation  strategy and household characteristics. Also, this study combines these estimated  marginal effects with future climate scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 and 8.5) to project the potential impact of hot temperatures in 2050 on rice technical efficiency. We find that weather shocks measured by the occurrence of  floods, typhoons and droughts negatively affect technical efficiency. Also, additional  days with a temperature above 31°C dampen technical efficiency and the negative  effect is increasing with temperature. For instance, a one day increase in the bin  [33°C-34°C] ([35°C and more[) lessen technical efficiency between 6.84 (2.82) and 8.05 (3.42) percentage points during the dry (wet) season.