Citation

Albala-Bertrand JM. World Dev. 1993; 21(9): 1417-1434.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1993, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0305-750X(93)90122-P

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the relation between a natural disaster situation and its potential effects on the growth rate of output, by means of a simple macroeconomic model, which is later applied as a demonstration to a sample of countries affected by major natural disasters in the last two decades. This quantitative application appears to support the model. The main conclusions are that capital loss is unlikely to have an important effect on growth and that a very moderate response expenditure may be sufficient to prevent the growth rate of output from falling. A general derived conclusion is that foreign and public disaster response may be better used to help actual victims and affected activities directly than to proceed on the rather unsound prima facie belief that the economy will be heavily affected by the disaster.