Motivating Costly Action in the Face of Climate Change: Hurricane Sandy and Flood Insurance (with Jamie T. Mullins)
Abstract
The purchase of flood insurance is a costly action taken to reduce individual financial risk. Using federal flood insurance records at the address-level, we examine how the degree of exposure to Hurricane Sandy changed coverage among small residential properties in New York City. We show that direct inundation increased take-up by more than 50%, but this response quickly falls to zero as the distance from direct harm increases. An analogous gradient in proximity to damage appears in national tract-level data. Unfortunately for efforts to encourage preemptive action to mitigate or adapt to climate change, we find that meaningful shifts in behavior only appear following direct experience with harm.
Keywords: Climate change; flood risk; flood insurance; New York City; Hurricane Sandy
Udugama, G. K., & Mullins, J. T. (2024). Valuing the Disamenity of Open Dumpsites: A Sri Lankan Case Study. The Journal of Environment & Development, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/10704965241251627
Abstract
Disposal of municipal solid waste in open dumpsites remains widespread throughout the developing world. While harm to local environments and public health may seem apparent, the lack of credible estimates of damages from open dumpsites is a major reason for their continued use. This paper estimates the disamenity damages imposed by an open dumpsite in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on nearby property owners using hedonic regression methods and a novel data set collected for the purpose. We find that property values increase by 10% for every additional 100 m of distance from the edge of the dumpsite and thus provide the first credible estimate of costs imposed by open dumping in a developing country. As open dumpsites are often sited in less affluent areas, our results suggest that such sites are likely exacerbating urban inequities in urban agglomerations across the developing world.
Keywords: open dumping, municipal solid waste, externality, hedonics
Work in Progress
The Effect of Weather Extremes on Recreational Use: Evidence From the US Army Corps Lakes (with David A. Keiser)
Abstract
Climate change is expected to have far-reaching effects on economic growth and overall well-being of society. While recognizing the significant progress made in the scientific literature on climate change in recent years, there remains significant uncertainty as to how climate change would affect particular non-market goods or services such as recreation. In this paper, we try to obtain causal estimates of how weather influences recreational use by leveraging a first-of-its-kind data source containing monthly visitation data over 14 years at lakes managed by the United States Army Corps: the country's largest water-based outdoor recreation provider. Our analysis shows increased precipitation leads to fewer lake visits, with sharper declines under heavier rainfall. Warmer temperatures initially increase visits, but this effect diminishes significantly at very high temperatures.
Keywords: recreation, climate change, non-market valuation, Army Corps lakes
Efficiency and Equity in the Post-Flood Reconstruction of Roads (with Adeel Malik, Rinchan Mirza, Hammad Rahman, Ghazala Mansuri, Oscar Barriga-Cabanillas, and Amparo Samper)
Livelihood Recovery after the Flood: The Impact on Non-Farm Micro-Enterprises (with Oscar Barriga-Cabanillas and Ghazala Mansuri)