Research
Here’s some of my current research on flood policies and hurricane impacts. Please contact me for any additional information about this work.
Levees: Infrastructure and Insurance as Adaptation to Flood Risk (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 construction lowers flood risk and reduces insurance take-up by 61%, removing $300 million in coverage. Levee 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.
Quantifying Demand for Flood Mitigation Information: Evidence from Online Search Queries (with Anna Ziff)