Economics of disasters and climate change最新文献

Though COVID vaccines have been available since December 2020, the rate at which they are administered remains slow, and in the meantime the pandemic continues to claim about as many lives every day as the 9/11 tragedy. I estimate that with the promised rate of vaccinations, if no additional non-pharmaceutical interventions are implemented, 203 thousand additional lives will be lost and the future cost of the pandemic will reach $1.3 trillion, or 6% of GDP. Using a cost-benefit analysis, I assess whether it is optimal for the United States to follow the lead of many European countries and introduce a nation-wide lockdown. I find that a lockdown would be indeed optimal and, depending on the assumptions, it should last between two and four weeks and will generate a net benefit of up to $653 billion.

This study conducts both theoretical and empirical analyses of how non-legally-binding COVID-19 policies affect people's going-out behavior. The theoretical analysis assumes that under a declared state of emergency, the individual going out suffers psychological costs arising from both the risk of infection and the stigma of going out. Our hypothesis states that under a declared state of emergency people refrain from going out because it entails a strong psychological cost. Then, this study estimates a model using regional mobility data and emergency declarations data to analyze self-restraint behavior under a non-legally binding emergency declaration. The results show that, compared with before the declaration of the state of emergency, going-out behavior was suppressed under the state of emergency and after it was lifted even when going out did not result in penalties, which is consistent with the theoretical analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is a possible hedging technique against a potential unexpected hazard, that can secure the capital invested by individuals or corporations. More specifically, the traditional hedging techniques are presented and illustrating whether they can be applicable against unexpected environmental disasters. Moreover, the evolution of hedging techniques regarding the catastrophe disasters are presented in the papers. After illustrating hazard-prone areas with the use of mapping visualization, techniques or catastrophe risk management and risk minimizations are proposed in an attempt to reduce the direct and indirect losses after a disastrous events while at the same time increase the trustworthiness of corporations and governments.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41885-021-00085-4.

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is inevitably affecting remittance-dependent countries through economic downturns in the destination countries, and restrictions on travel and sending remittances to their home country. We explore the potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the welfare of remittance-dependent households using a dataset collected in the Philippines prior to the outbreak. First, we confirm that remittances are associated with welfare of households, particularly for those whose head is male or lower educated. Then, we use the revision of the 2020 GDP projections before and after the COVID-19 crisis to gauge potential impacts on households caused by the pandemic. We find that remittance inflow will decrease by 14-20% and household spending per capita will decline by 1-2% (food expenditure per capita by 2-3%) in one year as a result of the pandemic.