IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2021-234.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Growth at Risk from Natural Disasters

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Tamim Bayoumi
  • Mr. Saad N Quayyum
  • Sibabrata Das

Abstract

The paper analyzes the impact of natural disasters on per-capita GDP growth. Using a quantile regressions and growth-at-risk approach, the paper examines the impact of disasters and policy choices on the distribution of growth rather than simply its average. We find that countries that have in place disaster preparedness mechanisms and lower public debt have lower probability of witnessing a significant drop in growth as a consequence of a natural disaster, but our innovative methodology in this paper finds that the two policies are complements since their effectiveness vary across different disaster scenarios. While both are helpful for small to mid-size disasters, lower debt—and hence more fiscal space—is more beneficial in the face of very large disasters. A balanced strategy would thus involve both policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Tamim Bayoumi & Mr. Saad N Quayyum & Sibabrata Das, 2021. "Growth at Risk from Natural Disasters," IMF Working Papers 2021/234, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/234
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=465825
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    disaster preparedness; impact of disaster; quantile regression; impact of natural disaster; regression estimator; Natural disasters; Fiscal space; Caribbean;
    All these keywords.

    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:imf:imfwpa:2021/234. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.