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Abstract

Natural disasters are an enormous source of destruction in the United States, and the target of many policy interventions. This dissertation research focuses on hurricane and flooding disaster events, evaluating the implementation of complementary flood policies and addressing the various economic impacts of hurricane exposure. The first chapter considers the interaction of two key flood policy instruments commonly used in the US, levee infrastructure and flood insurance, and measures how much flood insurance take-up changes in response to levee provision. Levees are critical infrastructure that reduce expected flood damage in a protected area. When a levee is constructed, and later accredited by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), it alters inherent flood risk, flood insurance prices, and mandatory insurance purchase requirements. Using a novel panel dataset drawing from the National Levee Database, manually collected levee accreditation documentation, and FEMA flood insurance data, we leverage variation in levee construction and accreditation timing within a difference-in-differences design. Construction timing allows us to examine insurance take-up as a result of decreased flood risk, while take-up responses to accreditation reflect changes in insurance prices and mandatory purchase requirements. This chapter has three main findings: first, we find that on net, households substitute flood insurance for levee provision, decreasing insurance take-up by 16 percent. When we further decompose this effect, we find that households initially respond to levee construction with a large decrease in demand, which is then mitigated by price reductions following levee accreditation. Third, we estimate that decreases in flood insurance take-up due to levee provision crowds out aggregate household insurance spending by \$183,325 per levee-mile. The second and third chapters consider the impacts of hurricane exposure on the business and housing sectors. In the United States, hurricanes can cause billions of dollars of damages through property and infrastructure damage, and the interruption of routine economic activity. Previous research has studied macroeconomic indicators of economic progress following these devastating disasters, but there is limited evidence on how hurricanes impact business survival and outcomes, and how hurricanes impact heterogeneous populations such as renters within the housing market. Chapter 2 combines detailed spatial data on hurricane trajectories with county-level characteristics on establishment volume to measure business volume changes following a natural disaster. Using an event study design, I find that establishment volume increases by up to 4.7 percent following a hurricane event, and this increase persists for the decade following the disaster. Through a size- and industry-based heterogeneity analysis, I find that very small establishments displace bigger establishments over time, while the share of large establishments remains constant over time. Regarding industry, I find that the construction, service, and retail trade industries largely follow the positive aggregate trend, though the positive impacts on the construction industry peak soon after the hurricane exposure. Chapter 3 combines spatial data on hurricane trajectories with median contract rent data from HUD within an event study design. We find that following a hurricane, median rent persistently decreases, by up to \$75 for three-bedroom properties, or 6.2 percent of baseline rental rates.

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