The current study examines the long-run effects of climatic factors on wheat production in China's top three wheat-producing provinces (Hebei, Henan, and Shandong). The data set consists of observations from 1992 to 2020 on which several techniques, namely, fully modified OLS (FMOLS), dynamic OLS (DOLS), and canonical co-integrating regression (CCR) estimators, and Granger causality, are applied. The results reveal that climatic factors, such as temperature and rainfall, negatively influenced wheat production in Henan Province. This means that Henan Province is more vulnerable to climate change. In contrast, it is observed that climatic conditions (via temperature and rainfall) positively contributed to wheat production in Hebei Province. Moreover, temperature negatively influenced wheat production in Shandong Province, while rainfall contributed positively to wheat production. Further, the results of Granger causality reveal that climatic factors and other determinants significantly influenced wheat production in the selected provinces.
Keywords: China; climate change; northern region; wheat production.