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Working Paper
Household Finance after a Natural Disaster: The Case of Hurricane Katrina
Little is known about how affected residents are able to cope with the fi nancial shock of a natural disaster. We investigate the impact that flooding from a major US hurricane had on household finance. Spikes in credit card borrowing and overall delinquency rates for the most flooded residents are modest in size and short-lived. Greater flooding results in larger reductions in total debt. Lower debt levels appear to be driven by homeowners using flood insurance to repay their mortgages rather than to rebuild. Debt reductions are larger in census tracts where mortgages were likely to be ...
Working Paper
Migration as a Vector of Economic Losses from Disaster-Affected Areas in the United States
In this paper, we infuse consideration of migration into research on economic losses from extreme weather disasters. Taking a comparative case study approach and using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, we document the size of economic losses via migration from 23 disaster-affected areas in the United States after the most damaging hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires on record. We then employ demographic standardization and decomposition to determine if these losses primarily reflect changes in out-migration or changes in the economic resources that ...