Market implied volatility and natural disasters: international evidence.

Using daily data, we provide fresh international evidence that an occurrence of natural disaster is accompanied by an increase in the market implied volatility of the main equity index in the same country contemporaneously and in the future. The relation between market implied volatility and natural disaster is a short-run relationship, mainly driven by the subsample of countries with a low frequency of disaster or with developed financial markets. Our analysis shows that in contrast to ex post volatility measures, implied volatility can reflect more climate physical risk information, which provides insight for multinational equity investment in coping with environmental physical risk. Our findings provide insight for multinational equity investment in coping with climate physical risk.

Six-year follow-up study of residential displacement and health outcomes following the 2011 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.

Studies examining the long-term health consequences of residential displacement following large-scale disasters remain sparse. Following the 2011 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, victims who lost their homes were resettled by two primary means: 1) group relocation to public housing or 2) individual relocation, in which victims moved into public housing by lottery or arranged for their own accommodation. Little is known about how the specific method of residential relocation affects survivors' health. We examined the association between residential relocation and long-term changes in mental and physical well-being. Our baseline assessment predated the disaster by 7 mo. Two follow-up surveys were conducted ∼2.5 y and 5.5 y after the disaster to ascertain the long-term association between housing arrangement and health status. Group relocation was associated with increased body mass index and depressive symptoms at 2.5-y follow-up but was no longer significantly associated with these outcomes at 5.5-y follow-up. Individual relocation at each follow-up survey was associated with lower instrumental activities of daily living as well as higher risk of cognitive impairment. Our findings underscore the potential complexity of long-term outcomes associated with residential displacement, indicating both positive and negative impacts on mental versus physical dimensions of health.

A model of the indirect losses from negative shocks in production and finance.

Economies are frequently affected by natural disasters and both domestic and overseas financial crises. These events disrupt production and cause multiple other types of economic losses, including negative impacts on the banking system. Understanding the transmission mechanism that causes various negative second-order post-catastrophe effects is crucial if policymakers are to develop more efficient recovery strategies. In this work, we introduce a credit-based adaptive regional input-output (ARIO) model to analyse the effects of disasters and crises on the supply chain and bank-firm credit networks. Using real Japanese networks and the exogenous shocks of the 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the Great East Japan Earthquake (March 11, 2011), this paper aims to depict how these negative shocks propagate through the supply chain and affect the banking system. The credit-based ARIO model is calibrated using Latin hypercube sampling and the design of experiments procedure to reproduce the short-term (one-year) dynamics of the Japanese industrial production index after the 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake. Then, through simulation experiments, we identify the chemical and petroleum manufacturing and transport sectors as the most vulnerable Japanese industrial sectors. Finally, the case of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake is simulated for Japanese prefectures to understand differences among regions in terms of globally engendered indirect economic losses. Tokyo and Osaka prefectures are the most vulnerable locations because they hold greater concentrations of the above-mentioned vulnerable industrial sectors.

Evidence for sharp increase in the economic damages of extreme natural disasters.

Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of natural disasters. Does this translate into increased economic damages? To date, empirical assessments of damage trends have been inconclusive. Our study demonstrates a temporal increase in extreme damages, after controlling for a number of factors. We analyze event-level data using quantile regressions to capture patterns in the damage distribution (not just its mean) and find strong evidence of progressive rightward skewing and tail-fattening over time. While the effect of time on averages is hard to detect, effects on extreme damages are large, statistically significant, and growing with increasing percentiles. Our results are consistent with an upwardly curved, convex damage function, which is commonly assumed in climate-economics models. They are also robust to different specifications of control variables and time range considered and indicate that the risk of extreme damages has increased more in temperate areas than in tropical ones. We use simulations to show that underreporting bias in the data does not weaken our inferences; in fact, it may make them overly conservative.

The impact of natural disasters on medicare costs in U.S. gulf coast states.

Medicare utilization and costs for residents of the U.S. Gulf Coast, who are highly vulnerable to natural disasters, may be impacted by their disaster exposure.To estimate differences in healthcare utilization by disaster exposure, we calculated Medicare expenditures among residents of U.S. Gulf States and compared them with expenditures among residents of other regions of the U.S.Panel models were used to calculate changes in overall Medicare expenditures, inpatient expenditures, and home health expenditures for 32,819 Medicare beneficiaries. Individual demographic characteristics were included as predictors of change in expenditures.Medicare beneficiaries with National Health Interview Survey participation were identified and Part A claims were linked. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) data was used to determine counties that experienced no, some, high, and extreme hazard exposure. FEMA data was merged with Medicare claims data to create a panel dataset from 2001 to 2007.Medicare Part A claims for the years 2001 to 2007 were merged with FEMA data related to disasters in each U.S. County. Overall Medicare costs, as well as costs for inpatient and home health care for residents of states located along the U.S. Gulf Coast (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida) were compared to costs for residents of the rest of the U.S.Expenditures among residents of U.S. Gulf States decreased with increased hazard exposure. Decreases in inpatient expenditures persisted in the years following a disaster.The use of beneficiary-level data highlights the potential for natural hazards to impact health care costs. This study demonstrates the possibility that exposure to more severe disasters may limit access to health care and therefore reduce expenditures. Additional research is needed to determine if there is a substitution of services (e.g., inpatient rehabilitation for home health) in disaster-affected areas during the post-disaster period.

Natural disasters and Malaysian economic growth: policy reforms for disasters management.

The natural catastrophic events largely damage the country's sustainability agenda through massive human fatalities and infrastructure destruction. Although it is partially supported the economic growth through the channel of "Schumpeter creative destruction" hypothesis, however, it may not be sustained in the long-run. This study examined the long-run and causal relationships between natural disasters (i.e., floods, storm, and epidemic) and per capita income by controlling FDI inflows and foreign aid in the context of Malaysia, during the period of 1965-2016. The study employed time series cointegration technique, i.e., autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)-bounds testing approach for robust inferences. The results show that flood, storm, and epidemic disasters substantially decrease the country's per capita income, while FDI inflows and foreign aid largely supported the country's economic growth in the short-run. These results are disappeared in the long-run, where flood and storm disasters exhibit the positive association with the economic growth to support the Schumpeter creative destruction hypothesis. The foreign aid decreases the per capita income and does not maintain the "aid-effectiveness" hypotheses in a given country. The causality estimates confirmed the disaster-led growth hypothesis, as the causality estimates running from (i) storm to per capita income, (ii) epidemic to per capita income, and (iii) storm to foreign aid. The results emphasized for making disaster action plans to reduce human fatalities and infrastructure for sustainable development.

Global Cancer Burden and Natural Disasters: A Focus on Asia's Vulnerability, Resilience Building, and Impact on Cancer Care.

The world has been witnessing more frequent and greater intensity weather-related disasters. Natural disasters hit every continent in the world. Asia has borne the brunt in terms of frequency and the total numbers of people affected. This is mainly because of Asia's increasing population and its large and varied landmass, with multiple river basins, mountains, flood plains, and active seismic and volcanic zones. The Union for International Cancer Control New Global Cancer Date: GLOBOCAN 2018 has estimated the global cancer burden to have risen to 18.1 million new cases and 9.6 million deaths. Asia constitutes roughly 60% of the world's population. The region contributes nearly one half of new cancer cases and more than one half of cancer deaths worldwide. This increase in the regional burden of cancer is largely a result of socioeconomic growth and the increasing size and aging of the population. In addition to the increasing cancer cases, the string of natural disasters will cause heavy damage and a great human toll in Asia. Medical care for disaster-affected populations is focused traditionally on the management of immediate trauma and acute infections. For people with noncommunicable diseases, this presents a significant risk. Patients with cancer are especially susceptible to the disruptions that natural disasters can cause. Their special needs are largely neglected. There is a need to refocus and expand disaster risk reduction strategies and resources to include patients with noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, because these conditions are generating the bulk of disability, ill health, and premature death around the globe. Having the world's biggest burden of cancer, Asia will definitely be facing these challenges.

Natural disasters and economic losses: controlling external migration, energy and environmental resources, water demand, and financial development for global prosperity.

The objective of the study is to examine the impact of natural disasters on external migration, price level, poverty incidence, health expenditures, energy and environmental resources, water demand, financial development, and economic growth in a panel of selected Asian countries for a period of 2005-2017. The results confirm that natural disasters in the form of storm and flood largely increase migration, price level, and poverty incidence, which negatively influenced country's economic resources, including enlarge healthcare expenditures, high energy demand, and low economic growth. The study further presented the following results: i) natural resource depletion increases external migration, ii) FDI inflows increase price level, iii) increase healthcare spending and energy demand decreases poverty headcount, iv) poverty incidence and mortality rate negatively influenced healthcare expenditures, v) industrialization increases energy demand, and vi) agriculture value added, fertilizer, and cereal yields required more water supply to produce greater yield. The study emphasized the need to magnify the intensity of natural disasters and create natural disaster mitigation unit to access the human and infrastructure cost and attempt quick recovery for global prosperity.

Improved social services and the burden of post-traumatic stress disorder among economically vulnerable people after a natural disaster: a modelling study.

BACKGROUND: Hurricanes and other natural disasters produce public health and economic consequences that last well beyond their immediate aftermath. Resource loss is a core driver of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after large-scale traumatic events. We examined the effect of restoration of residential and housing-related financial resources on recovery from PTSD in post-disaster contexts. METHODS: We built an agent-based model, empiricised with observational and experimental data, to test the effects of differing health service approaches on PTSD recovery, measured by prevalence and persistence. We tested a social services case management (SSCM) approach similar to Psychological First Aid, featuring shelter-based social service provision and linkage to mental health treatment for people who were displaced and had income loss, by comparing the treatment effectiveness of usual care alone, usual care with SSCM, stepped care alone, and stepped care with SSCM. FINDINGS: An SSCM approach to restore housing and provide linkage to mental health services among people who were displaced and had income loss after a large-scale natural disaster resulted in between 1·56 (95% CI 1·55-1·57) and 5·73 (5·04-6·91) times as many remitted PTSD cases as non-SSCM conditions at the end of the first year, and between 1·16 (1·16-1·17) and 2·28 (2·25-2·32) times as many remitted cases at the end of the second year. INTERPRETATION: Restoring economic and housing resources to populations affected by a natural disaster would significantly reduce the mental health burden in populations, particularly those with resource loss, after a disaster. FUNDING: US Department of Health and Human Services.

From Disaster Response to Community Recovery: Nongovernmental Entities, Government, and Public Health.

In this article, we examine the role of nongovernmental entities (NGEs; nonprofits, religious groups, and businesses) in disaster response and recovery. Although media reports and the existing scholarly literature focus heavily on the role of governments, NGEs provide critical services related to public safety and public health after disasters. NGEs are crucial because of their ability to quickly provide services, their flexibility, and their unique capacity to reach marginalized populations. To examine the role of NGEs, we surveyed 115 NGEs engaged in disaster response. We also conducted extensive field work, completing 44 hours of semistructured interviews with staff from NGEs and government agencies in postdisaster areas in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, Northern California, and Southern California. Finally, we compiled quantitative data on the distribution of nonprofit organizations. We found that, in addition to high levels of variation in NGE resources across counties, NGEs face serious coordination and service delivery problems. Federal funding for expanding the capacity of local Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster groups, we suggest, would help NGEs and government to coordinate response efforts and ensure that recoveries better address underlying social and economic vulnerabilities.

Hurricane Harvey: The Way Back.

Lessons learned as practices emerge from Harvey's wrath.

Extreme events in the context of climate change.

By definition, extreme events are rare. Socio-economic and human systems have not experienced adverse extreme events frequently enough to develop resilience, whether this be physical, economical or structural. Humans are vulnerable to extreme events because of our physiology and because we build thresholds into our socio-economic and human health systems. When these thresholds are exceeded the consequences can be devastating. This perspective will discuss changes in heat, drought and heavy rainfall extremes in the context of climate change.