Flooded Cities

Guy Michaels, Ferdinand Rauch, Adriana Kocornik-Mina and Thomas K.J. McDermott

No 11010, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Does economic activity relocate away from areas that are at high risk of recurring shocks? We examine this question in the context of floods, which are among the costliest and most common natural disasters. Over the past thirty years, floods worldwide killed more than 500,000 people and displaced over 650,000,000 people. This paper analyzes the effect of large scale floods, which displaced at least 100,000 people each, in over 1,800 cities in 40 countries, from 2003-2008. We conduct our analysis using spatially detailed inundation maps and night lights data spanning the globe's urban areas. We find that low elevation areas are about 3-4 times more likely to be hit by large floods than other areas, and yet they concentrate more economic activity per square kilometer. When cities are hit by large floods, the low elevation areas also sustain more damage, but like the rest of the flooded cities they recover rapidly, and economic activity does not move to safer areas. Only in more recently populated urban areas, flooded areas show a larger and more persistent decline in economic activity. Our findings have important policy implications for aid, development and urban planning in a world with rising urbanization and sea levels.

Keywords: Climate change; Flooding; Urban recovery; Urbanization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q54 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP11010 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Flooded Cities (2020)
Working Paper: Flooded cities (2020)
Working Paper: Flooded Cities (2016)
Working Paper: Flooded Cities (2015)
Working Paper: Flooded cities (2015)
Working Paper: Flooded cities (2015)
Working Paper: Flooded Cities (2015)
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:cpr:ceprdp:11010

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP11010

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().