Economic Impact of Natural Disasters : Tracking the Medium-Short term Growth Time Path in Asian Countries

• Main Author: Javed, Yielmaz
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Internationella Handelshögskolan, Högskolan i Jönköping, IHH, Nationalekonomi 2010
• Subjects: Natural Disasters; Asia; Agricultural output growth; industrial output growth; Floods; Earthquakes; Storms; Droughts; Economics; Nationalekonomi
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-12743

Past decades have witnessed evidence to large-scale upheaval caused by natural disasters. Thus, there is a need for determination of mechanisms through which natural disasters may influence growth, especially for developing countries. This paper traces the medium-short run time path of agricultural and industrial output growth response to four types of disasters in Southern and Southeastern Asian countries. Disasters considered are floods, droughts, storms and earthquakes. The empirical results suggest heterogeneous effects for disasters as well as different economic sectors. In many cases disaster impact was delayed. Generally speaking, floods and droughts have a stronger effect while earthquakes and storms have a weaker one on disaggregated output growth. Floods have a predominantly posi-tive effect while droughts have a negative one on both agricultural and industrial sectors. Storms seem to show a stronger negative effect in the agricultural sector than in industrial sector hinting at existence of short lived indirect effects. Earth-quakes, on the other hand, presented ambiguous growth responses. === No