IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/idb/wpaper/4652.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Estimating the Direct Economic Damage of the Earthquake in Haiti

Author

Listed:
  • Eduardo Cavallo
  • Andrew Powell
  • Oscar Becerra

Abstract

This paper uses simple regression techniques to make an initial assessment of the monetary damages caused by the January 12, 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti. Damages are estimated for a disaster with both 200,000 and 250,000 total dead and missing (i.e., the range of mortality that the earthquake is estimated to have caused) using Haiti’s economic and demographic data. The base estimate is US$8.1bn for a death toll of 250,000, but for several reasons this may be a lower- bound estimate. An estimate of US$13.9bn for the same death toll is within statistical error. While the results are subject to many caveats, the implications of such an estimate are significant. Raising such a figure will require many donors—bilateral, multilateral and private. Hence excellent coordination of funding and execution will be the key to ensuring the efficient use of funds.

Suggested Citation

  • Eduardo Cavallo & Andrew Powell & Oscar Becerra, 2010. "Estimating the Direct Economic Damage of the Earthquake in Haiti," Research Department Publications 4652, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:idb:wpaper:4652
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iadb.org/research/pub_hits.cfm?pub_id=IDB-WP-163&pub_file_name=pubIDB-WP-163.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bobba, Matteo & Powell, Andrew, 2006. "Multilateral Intermediation of Foreign Aid: What is the Trade-Off for Donor Countries?," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 1602, Inter-American Development Bank.
    2. Nicole Cornell Sadowski & Daniel Sutter, 2005. "Hurricane Fatalities and Hurricane Damages: Are Safer Hurricanes More Damaging?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(2), pages 422-432, October.
    3. Toya, Hideki & Skidmore, Mark, 2007. "Economic development and the impacts of natural disasters," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 20-25, January.
    4. Matteo Bobba & Andrew Powell, 2006. "Multilateral Intermediation of Foreign Aid: What is the Trade-Off for Donor Countries?," Research Department Publications 4500, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    5. Matthew E. Kahn, 2005. "The Death Toll from Natural Disasters: The Role of Income, Geography, and Institutions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 271-284, May.
    6. Kellenberg, Derek K. & Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq, 2008. "Does rising income increase or decrease damage risk from natural disasters?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 788-802, May.
    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. Davlasheridze, Meri & Fisher-Vanden, Karen & Allen Klaiber, H., 2017. "The effects of adaptation measures on hurricane induced property losses: Which FEMA investments have the highest returns?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 93-114.
    2. Eduardo Cavallo & Ilan Noy, 2009. "The Economics of Natural Disasters - A Survey," Working Papers 200919, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    3. Lazzaroni, Sara & van Bergeijk, Peter A.G., 2014. "Natural disasters' impact, factors of resilience and development: A meta-analysis of the macroeconomic literature," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 333-346.
    4. Peter A. G. van Bergeijk & Sara Lazzaroni, 2015. "Macroeconomics of Natural Disasters: Strengths and Weaknesses of Meta‐Analysis Versus Review of Literature," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(6), pages 1050-1072, June.
    5. Hyun Kim & David Marcouiller, 2015. "Considering disaster vulnerability and resiliency: the case of hurricane effects on tourism-based economies," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 54(3), pages 945-971, May.
    6. Kousky, Carolyn, 2012. "Informing Climate Adaptation: A Review of the Economic Costs of Natural Disasters, Their Determinants, and Risk Reduction Options," RFF Working Paper Series dp-12-28, Resources for the Future.
    7. Eduardo Cavallo & Ilan Noy, 2010. "The Aftermath of Natural Disasters: Beyond Destruction," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 11(2), pages 25-35, July.
    8. Yamamura, Eiji, 2011. "Effect of free media on views regarding the safety of nuclear energy after the 2011 disasters in Japan: evidence using cross-country data," MPRA Paper 32011, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Emmanuel Apergis & Nicholas Apergis, 2021. "The impact of COVID-19 on economic growth: evidence from a Bayesian Panel Vector Autoregressive (BPVAR) model," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(58), pages 6739-6751, December.
    10. Narasingha Das & Partha Gangopadhyay, 2023. "Did weekly economic index and volatility index impact US food sales during the first year of the pandemic?," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 9(1), pages 1-23, December.
    11. Noy, Ilan & Yonson, Rio, 2016. "A survey of the theory and measurement of economic vulnerability and resilience to natural hazards," Working Paper Series 19394, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    12. Matthew A. COLE & Robert J R ELLIOTT & OKUBO Toshihiro & Eric STROBL, 2013. "Natural Disasters and Plant Survival: The impact of the Kobe earthquake," Discussion papers 13063, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    13. Sweta Sen & Narayan Chandra Nayak & William Kumar Mohanty, 2023. "Impact of tropical cyclones on sustainable development through loops and cycles: evidence from select developing countries of Asia," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 65(5), pages 2467-2498, November.
    14. Kellenberg, Derek K. & Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq, 2008. "Does rising income increase or decrease damage risk from natural disasters?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 788-802, May.
    15. Richard S. J. Tol, 2022. "State capacity and vulnerability to natural disasters," Chapters, in: Mark Skidmore (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Disasters, chapter 20, pages 434-457, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Mark Skidmore & Hideki Toya, 2013. "Natural Disaster Impacts and Fiscal Decentralization," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 89(1), pages 101-117.
    17. Ilan Noy & Rio Yonson, 2018. "Economic Vulnerability and Resilience to Natural Hazards: A Survey of Concepts and Measurements," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-16, August.
    18. Yamamura, Eiji, 2012. "Natural disasters and their long-term effect on happiness: the case of the great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake," MPRA Paper 37505, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Eiji Yamamura, 2013. "Public sector corruption and the probability of technological disasters," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 233-255, August.
    20. Matthew A. COLE & Robert J R ELLIOTT & OKUBO Toshihiro & Eric STROBL, 2015. "Natural Disasters, Industrial Clusters and Manufacturing Plant Survival," Discussion papers 15008, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Natural disasters; direct economic damages; Haiti; earthquake; reconstruction; aid and development;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O19 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations
    • O54 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid

    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:idb:wpaper:4652. 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: Felipe Herrera Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iadbbus.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.