Search Results
Report
Disaster (over-)insurance: the long-term financial and socioeconomic consequences of Hurricane Katrina
Federal disaster insurance?in the form of national flood insurance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other programs?is designed to nationally-distribute large geography-specific shocks like earthquakes and hurricanes. This study examines the local longrun net impact of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent policy response on impacted residents. Using a unique fifteen-year panel of five percent of adult Americans? credit reports, we find higher rates of insolvency and lower homeownership among inundated residents of New Orleans ten years after the storm, relative to their ...
Working Paper
Flood Risk Mapping and the Distributional Impacts of Climate Information
This paper examines the provision of official flood risk information in the United States and its distributional impacts on residential flood insurance take-up. Assembling new data on all flood maps produced after Hurricane Katrina, I first document that updated maps decreased the number of properties zoned in high-risk floodplains and incorrectly omitted five million properties that should have been rezoned inside these areas. Removals and omissions disproportionately occurred in neighborhoods with more Black and Hispanic residents. Leveraging the staggered timing of map updates, I estimate ...