Natural disasters and labor markets

The catastrophic effects of natural disasters on insurance markets

Natural disasters often have catastrophic risks on insurance companies as well as on the insured. Using a very large dataset on homeowners’ insurance coverage by state, by firm, and by year for the 1984 to 2004 period, this paper documents the positive effect on losses and loss ratios of both unexpected catastrophes as well as large events that the authors term “blockbuster catastrophes.” Insur...

poverty and natural disasters

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Natural Disasters

Labor Specialization, Ethnicity, and Metropolitan Labor Markets

This paper provides an empirical assessment of the extent to which co-ethnic workers are underor overrepresented in industry and occupation-based employment sectors based on the characteristics of workers themselves, attributes and resources of ethnic groups in which workers are affiliated, and characteristics of metropolitan areas. Specifically, the paper evaluates two claims found in the lite...

Disasters and Development: Natural Disasters, Credit Constraints and Economic Growth

We demonstrate, using a simple two-period equilibrium model of the economy, the potential effects of extreme event occurrences such as natural or humanitarian disasters on economic growth over the mediumto long-term. In particular, we focus on the effect of such shocks on investment. We examine two polar cases; an unconstrained economy where agents have access to perfect capital markets, versus...