This paper studies the effects of drought shocks in a vulnerable environment – the Brazilian Semi-Arid. We analyze the impact of drought shocks, measured as deviations from long-run historical averages, on agricultural outcomes in a region that suffers recurrently from drought. After controlling for municipality and year fixed effects, we use weather shocks to exactly identify outcomes. Our benchmark results show substantial effects on the loss of crop area and on the value of agricultural output, as well as on crop yields. As we investigate distributional effects, our results show that crops related to familiar agriculture suffer more from drought shocks. We follow our investigation by testing heterogeneity effects and show that adequate water provision and maintenance of forest cover help in reducing the impact of drought shocks.

本文研究了巴西半干旱地区脆弱环境中干旱冲击的影响。我们分析了干旱冲击（以与长期历史平均值的偏差来衡量）对经常遭受干旱的地区农业成果的影响。在控制了城市和年份的固定效应后，我们利用天气冲击来准确确定结果。我们的基准结果显示，农作物面积损失、农业产值以及农作物产量均受到重大影响。当我们调查分配效应时，我们的结果表明，与熟悉的农业相关的作物更容易遭受干旱冲击。我们通过测试异质性效应来跟踪我们的调查，结果表明，充足的供水和森林覆盖的维护有助于减少干旱冲击的影响。