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Journal Article
Mother nature on strike
Working Paper
Reconstruction Multipliers
Following the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, financing of reconstruction by the Italian central government resulted in a sharp and unanticipated discontinuity in grants across municipalities that were ex-ante very similar. Using the emergency financing law as an instrument, we identify the causal effect of municipal government spending on local activity, controlling for the negative supply shock from the earthquake. In our estimates, this "reconstruction multiplier" is around unity, and we show that the grants provided public insurance. Economic activity contracted in municipalities that did not ...
Journal Article
Houston after the hurricanes
Journal Article
Economic history : the Sea Island hurricane of 1893
Journal Article
To save a city
How far should government power extend into private markets in the wake of a disaster?
Journal Article
Noteworthy: Hurricane Ike: six months later, still assessing the damage
On Sept. 13, Hurricane Ike made landfall at Galveston. Six months later, many Texas Gulf Coast communities continue to struggle with debris and damage. Rebuilding is under way, but full recovery is likely to take years.
Working Paper
Natural Disasters, Climate Change, and Sovereign Risk
I investigate how natural disaster can exacerbate fiscal vulnerabilities and trigger sovereign defaults. I extend a standard sovereign default model to include disaster risk and calibrate it to a sample of seven Caribbean countries that are frequently hit by hurricanes. I find that hurricane risk reduces government's ability to issue debt and that climate change may further restrict market access. Next, I show that "disaster clauses", that provide debt-servicing relief, improve government ability to borrow and mitigate the adverse impact of climate change on government's borrowing conditions.
Journal Article
The failure of flood control
Journal Article
High and dry
Almost a decade after the Flood of 1997, the Grand Forks metro area has made quite a comeback