The Effectiveness of Pre-Disaster Planning and Post-Disaster Aid: Examining the impact on plants of the Great East Japan Earthquake

Matthew Cole, Robert Elliott (), Toshihiro Okubo and Eric Strobl ()

Discussion papers from Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI)

Abstract: We examine the extent to which pre-disaster planning and post-disaster aid can help firms to recover from a natural disaster event. Using detailed plant-level data covering the areas affected by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, we find that neither pre-disaster planning nor post-disaster aid has a significant effect on the short term impact of the disaster in terms of the number of days that plants ceased operations. However, we do find evidence to suggest that post-disaster sales growth can be influenced by pre- and post-disaster policy. More specifically, we find that pre-disaster policies such as planning production substitution with other plants and making alternative transport arrangements affect sales post-disaster. We also discover that post-disaster aid from banks and from trading partners influences post-disaster sales but that government aid has no statistically significant effect.

Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2015-08
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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