American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics · 2022 · Ruixue Jia、Xiao Ma、Victoria Wenxin Xie
中文摘要
过去几十年间，洪水事件与洪水风险持续上升，并对经济产生了重要影响。我们利用1998—2018年美国县级和邮编区级数据，记录到：（1）洪水风险上升在长期对企业进入、就业和产出具有较大的负向影响；（2）洪水事件在短期降低产出，而对企业进入和就业的影响有限。基于这些发现，我们构建了一个空间均衡模型，刻画洪水风险如何塑造企业的区位选择与劳动者的就业，并据此估计洪水风险上升对经济的总体影响。我们发现，2018年洪水风险使美国总体产出降低了0.52%，其中80%源于预期效应，20%源于直接损害。我们还应用该模型研究其分配后果，并预测未来洪水风险变化的影响。我们的结果凸显了在评估自然灾害后果时，考虑企业和劳动者对风险做出调整的重要性。
Abstract
Flood events and flood risk have been increasing in the past few decades and have important consequences for the economy. Using county-level and ZIP-code-level data from the United States during 1998–2018, we document that (1) increased flood risk has a large negative impact on firm entry, employment, and output in the long run; and (2) flood events reduce output in the short run while their impact on firm entry and employment is limited. Motivated by these findings, we construct a spatial equilibrium model to characterize how flood risk shapes firms’ location choices and workers’ employment, which we use to estimate the aggregate impact of increased flood risk on the economy. We find that flood risk reduced U.S. aggregate output by 0.52% in 2018, 80% of which stemmed from expectation effects and 20% from direct damages. We also apply our model to study the distributional consequences and forecast the impact of future changes in flood risk. Our results highlight the importance of considering the adjustment of firms and workers in response to risk in evaluating the consequences of natural disasters.