Every cloud has a silver lining: Winners and losers from droughts

The paper aims to analyse the socioeconomic impacts of the 2022 drought on Italian agriculture, focusing on its distributive effects either from the sectoral or the regional perspective. A methodology based on consumer surplus theory was adopted. This allowed for identifying and quantifying impacts in terms of overall well-being for two different stakeholders: farmers and consumers. The change in well-being recorded for each is determined by the sum of two significant effects: the "price effect" and the "quantity effect". Interestingly, while consumers suffered economic losses due to the 2022 drought ("losers"), most farmers, thanks to the "price" effect, not only did not lose but gained ("winners"). Demand elasticity is affecting the patterns of distribution. Our results challenge a simplistic understanding of the economic effects of droughts and have numerous implications for policy.