This study provides new causal evidence for the impact of a large-scale natural disaster on local economic activity in Iran using nighttime light intensity. We apply the synthetic control method (SCM) and nighttime light (NTL) data from 1992 to 2020 for 31 provinces and 429 counties to study the...

This paper evaluates proposals for an annual wealth tax. While a dozen OECD countries levied wealth taxes in the recent past, now only three retain them, with only Switzerland raising a comparable fraction of revenue as recent proposals for a US wealth tax. Studies of these taxes sometimes, but...

The ongoing process of climate change goes along with a higher frequency and/or severity of droughts. While the short-term growth consequences of droughts are comparatively well examined, little research has yet been devoted to the question whether and how droughts affect medium and long-term...

This paper studies the relationship between incumbents’ performance and political polarization, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a spatial model of political competition in which the voters use the incumbent’s performance in office to update their beliefs about his...

Allocation decisions are vulnerable to political influence, but it is unclear in which situations politicians use their discretionary power in a partisan manner. We analyze the allocation of presidential disaster declarations in the United States, exploiting the spatiotemporal randomness of...

The high and increasing cost of natural disasters around the world motivates a growing body of literature on the role of natural disaster insurance in adapting to climate change. This chapter reviews current challenges in both public and private natural disaster insurance markets in the United...

This study provides new causal evidence for the impact of a large-scale natural disaster on local economic activity in Iran using nighttime light intensity. We apply the synthetic control method (SCM) and nighttime light (NTL) data from 1992 to 2020 for 31 provinces and 429 counties to study the...

While various empirical studies have found negative growth-effects of natural disasters, little is yet known about the microeconomic channels through which disasters might affect short- and especially long-term growth. This paper contributes to filling this gap in the literature by studying how...

We investigate the fiscal impacts of earthquakes in Japan. In contrast with earlier papers from elsewhere which examine national level aggregate spending, we are able to provide a detailed examination of separate budget categories within the local governments’ fiscal accounts. We do this using...

Allocation decisions are vulnerable to political influence, but it is unclear in which situations politicians use their discretionary power in a partisan manner. We analyze the allocation of presidential disaster declarations in the United States, exploiting the spatiotemporal randomness of...