The Opportunity of a Disaster: The Economic Impact of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake

Alvaro S. Pereira

Centre for Historical Economics and Related Research at York (CHERRY) Discussion Papers from CHERRY, c/o Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: By combining new archival and existing data, this paper provides estimates of the economic impact of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the largest ever-recorded natural catastrophe in Europe. The direct cost of the earthquake is estimated to be between 32 and 48 percent of the Portuguese GDP. In spite of strict controls, prices and wages remained volatile in the years after the tragedy. The recovery from earthquake also led to a rise in the wage premium of construction workers. More significantly, the earthquake became an opportunity for economic reform and to reduce the economic semi-dependency vis-à-vis Britain.

Keywords: Lisbon 1755 earthquake; natural disasters, economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N13 O52 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.york.ac.uk/media/economics/documents/c ... onpapers/Alvaro3.pdf Main text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:cherry:06/03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Centre for Historical Economics and Related Research at York (CHERRY) Discussion Papers from CHERRY, c/o Department of Economics, University of York c/o Andrea Papadia, Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andrea Papadia (andrea.papadia@york.ac.uk).