Conference Agenda

Tatyana Deryugina, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

I will discuss recent trends in natural disaster research, particularly the growing availability and use of geographically granular data on disaster impacts and the precise locations of affected individuals. This development allows for a much clearer picture of how disasters influence outcomes at the individual level, especially compared to more aggregate, place-based approaches. I will also present new work from the United States that highlights the critical role such granularity plays in understanding both short- and long-term effects of disasters on health, income, and survival. I will also illustrate the considerable heterogeneity across disaster types and intensity levels and emphasize why it is important to distinguish between catastrophic disasters and more localized, lower-intensity events. I will argue that some of my preliminary findings based on health outcomes suggest that reducing the incidence of catastrophic disasters should be a primary policy focus, though more empirical evidence is needed to guide investment decisions. Finally, I will outline key gaps in the literature, including the extent of moral hazard by municipalities, the effects of ex-post federal disaster aid, and the long-run returns on public investments in mitigation and adaptation infrastructure.