The Political Economy of Natural Disaster Damage
The Political Economy of Natural Disaster Damage
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DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.1884827
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发表时间：
2013-03
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
E. Neumayer;Thomas Plümper;Fabian Barthel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
E. Neumayer;Thomas Plümper;Fabian Barthel
自然灾害造成的经济损失有时可以预防，而且总是可以减轻。然而，由于集体行动、信息不对称和短视行为等问题，私人往往对这些措施投资不足。原则上可以纠正这些市场失灵的政府本身也面临着对代价高昂的防灾政策和减轻损害条例投资不足的激励。然而，灾害造成的损失因国家而异。我们认为，一个国家经历频繁和强烈自然灾害的倾向越大，理性的行为者就会投入更多的资金来防止和减轻损害。因此，一个国家的灾害倾向越大，实际发生的灾害造成的经济损失就越小-在其他一切条件不变的情况下，如灾害程度、国家的总财富和人均收入。与此同时，损害并非完全可以预防，较小的损失往往是随机的。因此，灾害倾向对较大的预测损害的边际影响将大于对较小的预测损害的边际影响。我们在全球样本中采用分位数回归分析来测试这些预测，重点关注造成全球绝大多数损失的三种灾害类型：地震，洪水和热带气旋。
Economic damage from natural hazards can sometimes be prevented and always mitigated. However, private individuals tend to underinvest in such measures due to problems of collective action, information asymmetry and myopic behavior. Governments, which can in principle correct these market failures, themselves face incentives to underinvest in costly disaster prevention policies and damage mitigation regulations. Yet, disaster damage varies greatly across countries. We argue that rational actors will invest more in trying to prevent and mitigate damage the larger a country's propensity to experience frequent and strong natural hazards. Accordingly, economic loss from an actually occurring disaster will be smaller the larger a country's disaster propensity - holding everything else equal, such as hazard magnitude, the country's total wealth and per capita income. At the same time, damage is not entirely preventable and smaller losses tend to be random. Disaster propensity will therefore have a larger marginal effect on larger predicted damages than on smaller ones. We employ quantile regression analysis in a global sample to test these predictions, focusing on the three disaster types causing the vast majority of damage worldwide: earthquakes, floods and tropical cyclones.