Thread by @mattkahn1966

The Adaptation Hypothesis posits that over time each subsequent natural disaster causes less loss of life and less destruction than in the past. Ida features the same intensity as Katrina. Will this storm cause less damage? A high stakes test.
nytimes.com/live/2021/08/2…

It now appears that powerful Hurricane Ida has caused fewer than 5 deaths. Without diminishing the tragedy, this is a remarkable data point for the adaptation hypothesis. Will the media discuss this point? Does "good news" get covered? A thread.
npr.org/2021/08/29/103…

Starting with my 2005 RESTAT paper, I have been working on the topic of how capitalism shields us from disaster risk. We have to live somewhere, what arrangements help to reduce our death risk?
ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v…

Will the media cover the good news here? Dora and I wrote a 2017 Economica paper arguing that the answer is "no". Progress isn't news. We discussed this point with Robert Fogel in my last discussion with him.
ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2…

Why is our economy becoming increasingly resilient in the face of hard punches thrown by Mother Nature? Billions of microeconomic adaptation adjustments are taking place that add up to a flatter "damage function".
amazon.com/gp/product/B08…

The mechanical macro climate change economics literature simply posits a stationary "climate damage function" that does not have micro-foundations --- so it violates the Lucas Critique. Young economists have many research opportunities here to innovate on the adaptation issue.

While the death toll from natural disasters will continue to decline, poor cities have the least public finance capacity to rebuild after such shocks. See our 2020 paper.
ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2…

The specter of climate change creates an economic growth imperative. To foster resilience, we need poor cities, poor people and poor nations to experience faster economic growth. What "rules of the game" accelerate economic growth?

A richer nation has the fiscal capacity to protect poor people and poor places. See my 2017 paper;
hamiltonproject.org/papers/protect…

Death is irreversible. If we survive a disaster, we can rebuild. Ida is a salient example of our rising resilience.
People forget that the U.S GNP is $23 trillion dollar a year. Even $ 23 Billion in damage = 1/1000. #ratios
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GNP

The interesting economics here is how durable of a capital stock should we be building given that Mother Nature is throwing harder punches. Read our 2017 paper. Don't forget Dixit and Pindyck's work on real options and investment under uncertainty.
ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jhouse/v…