ABSTRACT

Disasters pose a serious threat globally. In this paper we estimate the impact of disasters on economic growth at the district level for Argentina, for the period 1992–2013. Due to the lack of disaggregated GDP data, night light maps reported by the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are used as a proxy for economic activity. Disaster information comes from the records of the Disaster Inventory System (DesInventar), which include the full range of disasters, from mild to severe ones. A regression analysis is carried out considering a panel of districts, linking luminosity with disasters.

We find that an additional disaster -weighted by its severity- is associated with a small though statistically significant reduction in the district's economic growth rate, specifically, of 0.53 percentage points in the year of its occurrence. This result is mainly driven by the impact of hydrological disasters. However, we find no evidence of persistence of this effect over time; on the contrary there seems to be a recovery in the following period. Given the methodological limitations due to data constraints, estimates found here probably constitute a lower bound of the true macroeconomic effect. Thus, further research on the topic is recommendable.

摘要

灾害对全球构成严重威胁。在本文中，我们估计了 1992 年至 2013 年期间灾害对阿根廷地区级经济增长的影响。由于缺乏分类的 GDP 数据，美国国家海洋和大气管理局 (NOAA) 报告的夜间灯光图被用作经济活动的代理。灾害信息来自灾害清单系统（DesInventar）的记录，包括从轻到重的全方位灾害。考虑到一组地区，将光度与灾害联系起来，进行回归分析。

我们发现，额外的灾害（按其严重程度加权）与该地区经济增长率的小幅下降有关，但在统计上显着下降，具体而言，在其发生年份下降了 0.53 个百分点。这一结果主要受水文灾害的影响。然而，我们没有发现这种影响会随着时间的推移持续存在的证据。相反，接下来的时期似乎有所复苏。鉴于数据限制导致的方法学限制，此处得出的估计值可能构成真实宏观经济影响的下限。因此，对该主题的进一步研究是值得推荐的。