Natural disasters and economic development: Microeconometric evidence from Nepal's 2015 earthquake

据预测，全球气温上升将导致干旱和风暴等自然灾害的风险增加。这些和其他自然灾害，如地震，会产生深远的经济影响，远远超出它们造成的直接破坏。因此，该项目的主要目标是研究自然灾害对经济发展的影响，以及调节这些影响的渠道。我们将2015年尼泊尔发生的大地震作为自然实验。由于拥有独特的数据，尼泊尔提供了一个特别有用的案例研究。在方法上，我们将利用地震的外生性质，并采用自然实验文献中的计量经济学技术来确定地震的因果效应。了解自然灾害的中长期影响对世界欠发达地区特别重要，原因如下：在贫穷国家，用于防灾和处理灾害影响的资源较少。许多家庭从事往往受影响特别严重的农业部门或依赖自然资源的其他部门。生活在贫困中或接近贫困也意味着，即使是很小的负面冲击也可能产生长期影响，例如通过营养不良或教育决策的变化。此外，较不发达国家往往有政治经济方面的问题，例如体制薄弱或种族偏袒，这可能妨碍对灾害作出有效反应。我们建议研究地震在经济发展的三个重要领域的影响：一是地震对学校教育成果的影响；二是对自然资源后续利用的影响。第三，我们还调查了政治经济问题，并研究了援助如何分配的决定因素。为了研究教育成果和相关渠道，我们获得了地震前后多年全国考试成绩的全部数据，总共有200多万份观察结果。为了研究森林砍伐，我们使用了关于木材使用的调查数据以及来自卫星图片的森林砍伐数据。为了研究援助分配背后的政治经济学，我们收集了100多万户家庭住房破坏的客观衡量指标以及这些家庭收到的援助金额的详细数据。该项目的近期目标是帮助人们更好地了解灾害对家庭和环境的影响，并了解与灾害援助有关的政治经济问题。这反过来又对有关发展和灾害援助的应用问题具有实际意义。更一般地说，拟议的工作有助于更好地了解在发展进程中管理有限资源（如森林、分配给人力资本形成的资源和分配给重建的资金）的限制和挑战。

Increasing global temperatures are predicted to lead to a growing risk of natural disasters, such as droughts and storms. These and other natural disasters, such as earthquakes, can have profound economic impacts, well beyond the immediate destruction they cause. The main goal of the project is therefore to study effects of natural disasters on economic development, and channels through which these effects are mediated. We do so using the large earthquake that hit Nepal in 2015 as a natural experiment. Because of the availability of unique data Nepal provides a particularly useful case study. Methodologically, we will exploit the exogenous nature of the earthquake and employ econometric techniques from the natural experiments literature to identify causal effects of the earthquake.Understanding the medium- to long-run effects of natural disasters is particularly important for less developed regions of the world for a number of reasons: In poor countries, fewer resources are available to prepare for disasters and to deal with their effects. Many households are active in the often particularly strongly affected agricultural sector or otherwise dependent on natural resources. Living in or close to poverty also implies that even small negative shocks may have long-lasting effects, e.g. through malnutrition or changes in educational decisions. Further, less developed countries often have political economy related problems, such as weak institutions or ethnic favoritism, which may hamper an effective response to disasters. We propose to study the effect of the earthquake in three important domains of economic development: first, it’s effect on schooling outcomes; second, the effect on the subsequent use of the natural resources. Third, we also investigate political economy issues and study determinants of how aid is distributed. To study educational outcomes and associated channels, we have access to full data on nation-wide exam results for years before and after the earthquake, more than 2 million observations overall. To study deforestation, we use survey data on the use of wood as well as data on deforestation derived from satellite pictures. To study the political economy behind the distribution of aid, we have detailed data on objective measures of housing destruction for more than 1 million households as well as the amount of aid received by these households.The immediate goal of the project is to contribute to a better understanding of how households and the environment are affected by disasters, and to gain an understanding of political economy issues around disaster aid. This in turn has practical implications for applied questions around development and disaster aid. More generally, the proposed work can contribute towards a better understanding of constraints and challenges for managing limited resources (such as forests, resources allocated to human capital formation, and funds allotted to reconstruction) in the development process.