Economics of disasters and climate change最新文献

During the initial phase of pandemics, swift behavioral responses by individuals, such as social distancing, can temper the speed and magnitude of further infections. However, individual choices in this period are often made in the absence of reliable knowledge and coordinated policy interventions, producing variation in protective behaviors that cannot be easily deduced from that in later periods. Using unique monthly panel survey data, we examine variations in the association between changes in infections and risky behavior, particularly the frequencies of face-to-face conversations and dining out, between January to March 2020. We find that the increase in confirmed cases is negatively associated with the likelihood of these behaviors. However, high school graduates are less responsive than university graduates. We provide evidence that this can be attributed to their lower perception of infection risk, while we cannot fully rule out the roles of income opportunity costs. These results point to the benefits of interventions incorporating nudges to raise individuals' risk perceptions during the initial phase of pandemics. We also discuss the potential efficacy of such interventions in later periods of pandemics.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41885-021-00103-5.

This study investigates empirically how air pollution in earlier periods as measured by three air pollutants, namely N O ₂, P M ₁₀, and P M _2.5 may have affected the spread and fatality of COVID-19 in 31 European countries. Using panel data with fixed effects to examine the relationship between previous exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 new cases and COVID-19 deaths, we find that previous air pollution levels have both acted as an important factor in explaining the COVID-19 spread and its high fatality rate. This result may explain the negative impact that these pollutants may have on health and in particular on the respiratory functions that are mainly attacked by the virus.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at doi:10.1007/s41885-021-00099-y.

Using a nationally representative monthly survey, administered both before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper provides estimates of household responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Tajikistan, focusing on (i) short-term dynamic impacts on household economic outcomes and food security, (ii) heterogenous effects across different households, and (iii) coping with income shocks resulted from the pandemic. Parametric and non-parametric event studies are estimated to quantify the short-run dynamic impacts of the pandemic on household activities. The findings show that household employment and income dropped, and food insecurity immediately worsened with the first confirmed COVID-19 cases and continues to deteriorate six months into the pandemic in Tajikistan. The extent of the impacts varies depending on locations, pre-pandemic income levels, and household sizes. In response to the income shock brought about by the pandemic, households increased borrowings and reduced food and health expenditures. These results are robust to different specifications.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytical framework for estimating the behavioral effects of disasters and their economic consequences. The reduction of these losses represents the benefits of pre-disaster mitigation and post-disaster recovery. We provide conceptualizations, definitions, classifications, and a formal welfare analysis of this category of economic consequences. We also examine methods used to measure behavioral reactions to fear for insight into improving their delineation. Because we are interested in a comprehensive assessment of behavioral effects, we also include resilience adjustments and extend our initial partial equilibrium analysis to the general equilibrium level. The analysis is intended to serve as the basis for the legitimate inclusion of behavioral consequences of disasters in benefit-cost analysis.

This paper examines sectoral productivity shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, their aggregate impact, and the possible compensatory effects of improving productivity in infrastructure-related sectors. We employ the KLEMS annual dataset for a group of OECD and Latin America and the Caribbean countries, complemented with high-frequency data for 2020. First, we estimate a panel vector autoregression of growth rates in sector level labor productivity to specify the nature and size of sectoral shocks using the historical data. We then run impulse-response simulations of one standard deviation shocks in the sectors that were most affected by COVID-19. We estimate that the pandemic cut economy-wide labor productivity by 4.9% in Latin America, and by 3.5% for the entire sample. Finally, by modeling the long-run relationship between productivity shocks in the sectors most affected by COVID-19, we find that large productivity improvements in infrastructure-equivalent to at least three times the historical rates of productivity gains-may be needed to fully compensate for the negative productivity losses traceable to COVID-19.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41885-021-00098-z.

Pandemics have been a long-standing object of study by economists, albeit with declining interest, that is until COVID-19 arrived. We review current knowledge on the pandemics' effects on long-term economic development, spanning economic and historical debates. We show that all economic inputs are potentially affected. Pandemics reduce the workforce and human capital, have mixed effects on investment and savings, but potentially positive consequences for innovation and knowledge development, depending on accompanying institutional change. In the absence of an innovative response supporting income redistribution, pandemics tend to increase income inequalities, worsening poverty traps and highlighting the distributional issues built into insurance-based health insurance systems. We find that the effects of pandemics are asymmetric over time, in space, and among sectors and households. Therefore, we suggest that the research focus on the theoretical plausibility and empirical significance of specific mechanisms should be complemented by meta-analytic efforts aimed at reconstructing the resulting complexity. Finally, we suggest that policymakers prioritize the development of organizational learning and innovative capabilities, focusing on the ability to adapt to emergencies rather than developing rigid protocols or mimicking solutions developed and implemented in different contexts.

We evaluate the 1968 H3N2 Flu pandemic's economic cost in a cross-section of 52 countries. Using excess mortality rates as a proxy for the country-specific severity of the pandemic, we find that the average mortality rate (0.0062% per pandemic wave) was associated with a decline in output of 2.4% over the two pandemic waves. Our estimates also suggest the losses in consumption (-1.9%), investment (-1.2%), and productivity (-1.9%) over the two pandemic waves. The results are robust across regressions using alternative measures of mortality and output loss. The study adds to the current literature new empirical evidence on the economic consequences of the past pandemics in light of the potential impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on productivity.