IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbwp/97402.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of a Man-made Disaster on Consumer Credit Outcomes: Evidence from the 2018 Merrimack Valley Natural Gas Explosions

Author

Listed:
  • Bo Zhao

Abstract

This paper is the first to empirically examine the impact of a man-made disaster on consumer credit outcomes. It uses the 2018 Merrimack Valley natural gas explosions as a quasi-random natural experiment and shows that the explosions had a temporary negative effect on debt balances, credit limits, and the number of delinquencies, and did not affect credit scores. The decreases in debt balances and credit limits were likely driven by a decline in credit demand when the affected individuals faced severe life disruption, great uncertainty, and negative financial shocks associated with the disaster. It took some time for the explosions to have an impact on delinquencies, suggesting that the affected individuals may have received short-term forbearance or used default as a last resort. The lack of large, long-lasting effects of the explosions likely reflects the critical role that external assistance to the affected communities played in mitigating the disaster’s impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Bo Zhao, 2023. "The Impact of a Man-made Disaster on Consumer Credit Outcomes: Evidence from the 2018 Merrimack Valley Natural Gas Explosions," Working Papers 23-17, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:97402
    DOI: 10.29412/res.wp.2023.17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/2023/the-impact-of-a-man-made-disaster-on-consumer-credit-outcomes
    File Function: Summary
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/Workingpapers/PDF/2023/wp2317.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.29412/res.wp.2023.17?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Justin Gallagher & Daniel Hartley & Shawn Rohlin, 2023. "Weathering an Unexpected Financial Shock: The Role of Federal Disaster Assistance on Household Finance and Business Survival," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(2), pages 525-567.
    2. Billings, Stephen B. & Gallagher, Emily A. & Ricketts, Lowell, 2022. "Let the rich be flooded: The distribution of financial aid and distress after hurricane harvey," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 797-819.
    3. Justin Gallagher & Daniel Hartley, 2017. "Household Finance after a Natural Disaster: The Case of Hurricane Katrina," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 199-228, August.
    4. Donghoon Lee & Wilbert Van der Klaauw, 2010. "An introduction to the FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel," Staff Reports 479, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    5. Sergio Correia & Paulo Guimarães & Tom Zylkin, 2020. "Fast Poisson estimation with high-dimensional fixed effects," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 20(1), pages 95-115, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Justin Contat & Carrie Hopkins & Luis Mejia & Matthew Suandi, 2024. "When climate meets real estate: A survey of the literature," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 52(3), pages 618-659, May.
    2. Joshua Blonz & Brigitte Roth Tran & Erin Troland, 2023. "The Canary in the Coal Decline: Appalachian Household Finance and the Transition from Fossil Fuels," Working Paper Series 2023-09, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    3. Benjamin Collier & Daniel Hartley & Benjamin J. Keys & Jing Xian Ng, 2024. "Credit When You Need It," Working Paper Series WP 2024-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    4. Xuesong You & Carolyn Kousky, 2024. "Improving household and community disaster recovery: Evidence on the role of insurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 91(2), pages 299-338, June.
    5. Johannes Buggle & Thierry Mayer & Seyhun Orcan Sakalli & Mathias Thoenig, 2023. "The Refugee’s Dilemma: Evidence from Jewish Migration out of Nazi Germany," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(2), pages 1273-1345.
    6. Emmanuel Ebo Arthur & Solomon Gyamfi & Wolfgang Gerstlberger & Jan Stejskal & Viktor Prokop, 2023. "Towards Circular Economy: Unveiling Heterogeneous Effects of Government Policy Stringency, Environmentally Related Innovation, and Human Capital within OECD Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-18, March.
    7. Alex Hollingsworth & Krzysztof Karbownik & Melissa A. Thomasson & Anthony Wray, 2024. "The Gift of a Lifetime: The Hospital, Modern Medicine, and Mortality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(7), pages 2201-2238, July.
    8. Mauricio S. de Carvalho & Patrícia C. Melo & Bruno T. Rocha & Isabel Proença & João de Abreu e Silva, 2025. "Market potential, road accessibility, and firm births: evidence from twenty years of road investment," Working Papers REM 2025/0364, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.
    9. Bloem, Michael D. & Villero, Jesús, 2024. "College opportunity and teen fertility: Evidence from Ser Pilo Paga in Colombia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    10. Martins, Pedro S. & Thomas, Jonathan P., 2022. "Training, Worker Mobility, and Employer Coordination," IZA Discussion Papers 15488, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Magnus Lodefalk & Fredrik Sjöholm & Aili Tang, 2022. "International trade and labour market integration of immigrants," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(6), pages 1650-1689, June.
    12. Fukai, Taiyo & Kawaguchi, Daiji & Kondo, Ayako & Yokoyama, Izumi, 2024. "How do firms attain internal and external flexibility of employment?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    13. Weidner, Martin & Zylkin, Thomas, 2021. "Bias and consistency in three-way gravity models," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    14. Martins, Pedro S. & Thomas, Jonathan P., 2023. "Employers' Associations, Worker Mobility, and Training," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1219, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    15. Jerch, Rhiannon & Kahn, Matthew E. & Lin, Gary C., 2023. "Local public finance dynamics and hurricane shocks," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    16. Massimiliano Coda Zabetta & Ernest Miguelez & Francesco Lissoni & Sarah Hegarty, 2025. "Foreign-origin managers and FDI location choice," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 56(2), pages 194-202, March.
    17. Ziyan Zhang & Junyan Zhang & Pushi Wang, 2024. "Measurement of disruptive innovation and its validity based on improved disruption index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(11), pages 6477-6531, November.
    18. Jordi Paniagua & Jesús Peiró-Palomino & Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo, 2021. "Asylum Migration in OECD Countries: In Search of Lost Well-Being," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 1109-1137, February.
    19. Beniamino Quintieri & Giovanni Stamato, 2023. "Are preferential agreements beneficial to EU trade? New evidence from the EU–South Korea treaty," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(12), pages 3511-3541, December.
    20. Kazunobu Hayakawa & Hiroshi Mukunoki, 2023. "The magnification effect in global value chains," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 141-157, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    man-made disasters; household credit; consumer debt;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
    • Q59 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:97402. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.