A Novel Methodological Approach to Estimate the Impact of Natural Hazard-Induced Disasters on Country/Region-Level Economic Growth

With the increased frequency of extreme weather events and large-scale disasters, extensive societal and economic losses incur every year due to damage of infrastructure and private properties, business disruptions, fatalities, homelessness, and severe health-related issues. In this article, we analyze the economic and disaster data from 1970 through 2010 to investigate the impact of disasters on country/region-level economic growth. We leveraged a random parameter modeling approach to develop the growth-econometrics model that identifies risk factors significantly influencing the country/region-level economic growth in the face of natural hazard-induced disasters, while controlling for country/region- and time-specific unobserved heterogeneities. We found that disaster intensity in terms of fatalities and homelessness, and economic characteristics such as openness to trade and a government’s consumption share of purchasing power parity (PPP), are the significant risk factors that randomly vary for different countries/regions. Other significant factors found to be significant include population, real gross domestic product (GDP), and investment share of PPP converted GDP per capita. We also found that flood is the most devastating disaster to affect country/region-level economic growth. This growth-econometrics model will help in the policy and decision making of governments related to the investment needs for pre- and post-disaster risk mitigation and response planning strategies, to better protect nations and minimize disaster-induced economic impacts.