TY - JOUR
T1 - Localized commercial effects from natural disasters
T2 - The case of Hurricane Sandy and New York City
AU - Meltzer, Rachel
AU - Ellen, Ingrid Gould
AU - Li, Xiaodi
N1 - Funding Information:
This project is supported by the National Science Foundation ’s program on Infrastructure, Management and Extreme Events [grant number 1463093 ].
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - This paper considers the localized economic impacts of a climate-related storm, Hurricane Sandy. Controlling for exposure to pre-storm risk, we exploit variation in post-storm inundation to identify the impact of storm-induced flooding on establishment survival, employment, and sales revenues. Results indicate that there were economic losses from Sandy and, as expected, they were concentrated among retail businesses with more localized consumer bases. After Sandy, retail establishments exposed to higher surge levels experienced 11 percentage point higher closure rates and 9 percent larger sales revenue declines compared to establishments with less exposure to inundation. In addition, closures were concentrated among standalone establishments. These losses appear to be fairly persistent, showing no sign of recovery to pre-storm levels by 2016. The evidence for jobs is more tentative—at most, they exacerbated an existing downward trend for retail establishments after Sandy.
AB - This paper considers the localized economic impacts of a climate-related storm, Hurricane Sandy. Controlling for exposure to pre-storm risk, we exploit variation in post-storm inundation to identify the impact of storm-induced flooding on establishment survival, employment, and sales revenues. Results indicate that there were economic losses from Sandy and, as expected, they were concentrated among retail businesses with more localized consumer bases. After Sandy, retail establishments exposed to higher surge levels experienced 11 percentage point higher closure rates and 9 percent larger sales revenue declines compared to establishments with less exposure to inundation. In addition, closures were concentrated among standalone establishments. These losses appear to be fairly persistent, showing no sign of recovery to pre-storm levels by 2016. The evidence for jobs is more tentative—at most, they exacerbated an existing downward trend for retail establishments after Sandy.
KW - Business
KW - Natural disaster
KW - Resilience
KW - Retail
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85095415993&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2020.103608
DO - 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2020.103608
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85095415993
SN - 0166-0462
VL - 86
JO - Regional Science and Urban Economics
JF - Regional Science and Urban Economics
M1 - 103608
ER -