We know little about the dynamic economic impacts of natural disasters. I examine the effect of hurricanes on US counties’ economies 0-10 years after landfall. Overall, I find no substantial changes in county population, earnings, or the employment rate. The largest empirical effect of a...

We follow Medicare cohorts to estimate Hurricane Katrina's long-run mortality effects on victims initially living in New Orleans. Including the initial shock, the hurricane improved eight-year survival by 2.07 percentage points. Migration to lower-mortality regions explains most of this survival...

The government acting as an insurer of last resort can cause moral hazard if agents respond by taking on more risk or reducing private insurance coverage, thinking they will be bailed out. Theoretically, ex ante measures can ameliorate this problem, but it is not known how effective actual...

This paper provides empirical evidence of advantageous selection in insurance markets. By using a novel insurance setting where moral hazard is not a concern, I am able to distinguish selection from moral hazard. I find that takeup of area yield crop insurance in the US, where payouts are based...

Climate change is increasing the frequency of natural disasters, which could make municipal bonds a riskier asset class. We study the effects of natural disasters on municipal bond returns, exploiting the repeat sales approach to overcome the challenge that municipal bonds trade extremely...

Climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events and natural disasters, which could in turn make municipal bonds---a $4 trillion market in the US---a fundamentally riskier asset class. We study the effect of natural disasters on municipal bond returns and volatilities,...

Do new societal needs increase charitable giving or simply reallocate a fixed supply of donations? We study this question using IRS datasets and the natural experiment of deadly tornadoes. Among ZIP Codes located more than 20 miles away from a tornado's path, donations by households increase by...

Many environmental hazards produce health effects that take years to arise, but quasi-experimental studies typically measure outcomes and treatment over short time periods. We develop a new approach to overcome this challenge and use it to gauge the effect of exposure to air pollution on US life...