Research
Here’s some of my current research on flood policy instruments and hurricane impacts. Please contact me for any additional informaton about this work.
Levees: Infrastructure and Insurance as Adaptation to Flood Risk (joint with Anna Ziff)
Draft available on SSRN
Abstract: Public investments in disaster mitigation may crowd out demand for insurance. We measure the extent of substitution between flood-mitigating infrastructure and public flood insurance. Using a novel dataset of U.S.\ levee provision, we find that levee \textit{construction} lowers flood risk and reduces insurance take-up by 61\%, removing $300 million in coverage. Levee \textit{accreditation}, which reduces premiums and lifts mandatory purchase requirements, offsets part of this decline, recovering $160 million in coverage. The positive effect of accreditation indicates that reducing premiums increases insurance take-up, despite the counteracting influence of mandate removal.
Natural Disasters and Firm Behavior in the United States
Abstract: Hurricanes cause tremendous economic damage to the United States. Although economists have studied macro-level indicators of economic progress following these devastating disasters, there is very little evidence of establishment-level responses to hurricanes, and heterogeneity in outcomes depending on establishment characteristics. This paper combines detailed spatial data on hurricane trajectories with county-level characteristics on establishment entry and exit to provide the first empirical micro-level estimates of establishment behavior following a natural disaster. I plan to perform a heterogeneity analysis to determine how entry and exit varies depending on establishment characteristics. My initial results indicate that establishments actually increase following a hurricane event, and this increase persists for many years following the disaster. I find no evidence of firm size heterogeneity in post-hurricane establishment counts.