Macroeconomic Consequences of Natural Disasters : A Modeling Proposal and Application to Floods and Earthquakes in Turkey

Turkey is vulnerable to natural disasters that can generate substantial damages to public and private sector infrastructure capital. Earthquakes and floods are the most frequent hazards today, and flood risks are expected to increase with climate c...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hallegatte, Stephane, Jooste, Charl, Mcisaac, Florent John
Format: Policy Research Working Paper
Language:English
Published: Washington, DC: World Bank 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/479471645554771991/Macroeconomic-Consequences-of-Natural-Disasters-A-Modeling-Proposal-and-Application-to-Floods-and-Earthquakes-in-Turkey
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37060
id okr-10986-37060
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-370602022-03-03T05:10:42Z Macroeconomic Consequences of Natural Disasters : A Modeling Proposal and Application to Floods and Earthquakes in Turkey Hallegatte, Stephane Jooste, Charl Mcisaac, Florent John TRADE AND INVESTMENT MONETARY POLICY NATURAL DISASTER DAMAGE TO INFRASTRUCTURE IMPACT OF CLIMATE MARGINAL PRODUCTIVITY OF CAPITAL Turkey is vulnerable to natural disasters that can generate substantial damages to public and private sector infrastructure capital. Earthquakes and floods are the most frequent hazards today, and flood risks are expected to increase with climate change. To ensure stability and growth and minimize the welfare impact of these disasters, these shocks need to be managed and accounted for in macro-fiscal and monetary policy. To support this process, the World Bank Macrostructural Model is adapted to assess the macroeconomic effects of natural (geophysical or climate-related) disasters. The macroeconomic model is extended on several fronts: (1) a distinction is made between infrastructure and non-infrastructure capital, with complementary or substitutability between the two categories; (2) the production function is adjusted to account for short-term complementarity across capital assets; (3) the reconstruction process is modeled in a way that accounts for post-disaster constraints, with distinct processes for the reconstruction of public and private assets. The results show that destroyed infrastructure capital makes the remaining non-infrastructure capital less productive, which means that disasters reduce the total stock of capital, but also its productivity. The welfare impact of a disaster—proxied by the discounted consumption loss—is found to increase non-linearly with direct asset losses. Macroeconomic responses reduce the welfare impact of minor disasters but magnify it when direct asset losses exceed the economy’s absorption capacity. The welfare impact also depends on the pre-existing economic situation, the ability of the economy to reallocate resources toward reconstruction, and the response of the monetary policy. Appropriate macro-fiscal and monetary policies offer cost-effective opportunities to mitigate the welfare impact of major disasters. 2022-03-02T20:44:49Z 2022-03-02T20:44:49Z 2022-02-22 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/479471645554771991/Macroeconomic-Consequences-of-Natural-Disasters-A-Modeling-Proposal-and-Application-to-Floods-and-Earthquakes-in-Turkey http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37060 English CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank Washington, DC: World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Publications & Research Europe and Central Asia Turkey
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic TRADE AND INVESTMENT
MONETARY POLICY
NATURAL DISASTER
DAMAGE TO INFRASTRUCTURE
IMPACT OF CLIMATE
MARGINAL PRODUCTIVITY OF CAPITAL
spellingShingle TRADE AND INVESTMENT
MONETARY POLICY
NATURAL DISASTER
DAMAGE TO INFRASTRUCTURE
IMPACT OF CLIMATE
MARGINAL PRODUCTIVITY OF CAPITAL
Hallegatte, Stephane
Jooste, Charl
Mcisaac, Florent John
Macroeconomic Consequences of Natural Disasters : A Modeling Proposal and Application to Floods and Earthquakes in Turkey
geographic_facet Europe and Central Asia
Turkey
description Turkey is vulnerable to natural disasters that can generate substantial damages to public and private sector infrastructure capital. Earthquakes and floods are the most frequent hazards today, and flood risks are expected to increase with climate change. To ensure stability and growth and minimize the welfare impact of these disasters, these shocks need to be managed and accounted for in macro-fiscal and monetary policy. To support this process, the World Bank Macrostructural Model is adapted to assess the macroeconomic effects of natural (geophysical or climate-related) disasters. The macroeconomic model is extended on several fronts: (1) a distinction is made between infrastructure and non-infrastructure capital, with complementary or substitutability between the two categories; (2) the production function is adjusted to account for short-term complementarity across capital assets; (3) the reconstruction process is modeled in a way that accounts for post-disaster constraints, with distinct processes for the reconstruction of public and private assets. The results show that destroyed infrastructure capital makes the remaining non-infrastructure capital less productive, which means that disasters reduce the total stock of capital, but also its productivity. The welfare impact of a disaster—proxied by the discounted consumption loss—is found to increase non-linearly with direct asset losses. Macroeconomic responses reduce the welfare impact of minor disasters but magnify it when direct asset losses exceed the economy’s absorption capacity. The welfare impact also depends on the pre-existing economic situation, the ability of the economy to reallocate resources toward reconstruction, and the response of the monetary policy. Appropriate macro-fiscal and monetary policies offer cost-effective opportunities to mitigate the welfare impact of major disasters.
format Policy Research Working Paper
author Hallegatte, Stephane
Jooste, Charl
Mcisaac, Florent John
author_facet Hallegatte, Stephane
Jooste, Charl
Mcisaac, Florent John
author_sort Hallegatte, Stephane
title Macroeconomic Consequences of Natural Disasters : A Modeling Proposal and Application to Floods and Earthquakes in Turkey
title_short Macroeconomic Consequences of Natural Disasters : A Modeling Proposal and Application to Floods and Earthquakes in Turkey
title_full Macroeconomic Consequences of Natural Disasters : A Modeling Proposal and Application to Floods and Earthquakes in Turkey
title_fullStr Macroeconomic Consequences of Natural Disasters : A Modeling Proposal and Application to Floods and Earthquakes in Turkey
title_full_unstemmed Macroeconomic Consequences of Natural Disasters : A Modeling Proposal and Application to Floods and Earthquakes in Turkey
title_sort macroeconomic consequences of natural disasters : a modeling proposal and application to floods and earthquakes in turkey
publisher Washington, DC: World Bank
publishDate 2022
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/479471645554771991/Macroeconomic-Consequences-of-Natural-Disasters-A-Modeling-Proposal-and-Application-to-Floods-and-Earthquakes-in-Turkey
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37060
_version_ 1764486525089742848