Climate and Nomadic Migration in a Nonlinear World: Evidence of the Historical China

Stéphane Goutte (1) , Olivier Damette (2) , Qing Pei (3)

1 Cemotev - Centre d'études sur la mondialisation, les conflits, les territoires et les vulnérabilités
2 BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée
3 CUHK - City University of Hong Kong [Hong Kong]

This paper deals with climate change and nomadic migration relationships at a long term and wide geographical scale using a statistical approach in the vein of Bai and Kung (2011). More precisely, it presents a reassessment of these relationships in a nonlinear world using threshold regressions, time varying-copula and nonlinear causality tests. The large amount of historical records in China enables us to re-interpret the link between climate and historical social dynamics (Hsiang et al., 2013) through different regimes of temperatures and precipitations.

Mots clés: Copula; Cau; Climate change; Nomadic migration; Conflicts; Historical China; Threshold Regression; Non linearity

Domaines: Etudes de l'environnement

Stéphane Goutte, Olivier Damette, Qing Pei. Climate and Nomadic Migration in a Nonlinear World: Evidence of the Historical China. SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020, 163, pp.2055-2071. ⟨10.2139/ssrn.3615328⟩. ⟨hal-04473506v2⟩