Can Openness Mitigate the Effects of Weather Shocks? Evidence from India’s Famine Era Robin Burgess and Dave Donaldson

A weakening dependence on rain-fed agriculture has been a hallmark of the economic transformation of countries throughout history. Rural citizens in developing countries today , however, remain highly exposed to fluctuations in the weather. This exposure affects the incomes these citizens earn and the prices of the foods they eat. Recent work has documented the significant mortality and morbidity stress that rural households face in times of nominal agricultural income and acutely high food prices—are an extreme manifestation of this mapping from weather to death. Knowles (1924) describes these events as " agricultural lockouts " where both food supplies and agricultural employment, on which the bulk of the rural population depends, plummet. The result is catastrophic with widespread hunger and loss of life. Though now constrained to the world's poorest countries food shortages and famines were features of most pre-industrial societies. Over time there has been intense debate over what role openness to trade in food might play in mitigating or exacerbating the mortality impacts of weather shocks. One group of thinkers dating back to at least Smith (1776) argues that: " ...drought [in " rice countries " ] is, perhaps, scarce ever so universal as necessarily to occasion a famine, if the government would allow a free trade. " (IV.5.45). This school of thought sees greater openness to trade as a key means of protecting human life by reducing volatility in real incomes. But others haver argued along the lines of Gandhi (1938), that greater trade