"For almost a decade, economists Kevin M. Simmons and Daniel Sutter have been studying the economic impacts and social consequences of the approximately 1,200 tornadoes that touch down across the United States annually. During this time, Simmons and Sutter have been compiling information from...

We examine applications to the Oklahoma Saferoom Initiative, which offered rebates to residents for construction of an in-home tornado shelter. Markets for risk mitigation are prone to market failure because consumers treat low probability, high consequence events as zero probability events....

Several recent powerful tornadoes have raised interest among the public and policymakers in tornado shelters. We estimate casualty functions (fatalities, injuries) based on factors like storm intensity, county population density, and time of day, using historical data from Oklahoma and then...