Well-being Effects of Extreme Weather Events in the US

This paper estimates the effect of extreme weather and climate events on the subjective wellbeing of US residents. We match forty two billion-dollar disaster events with individual survey data between 2005 and 2010. We find that being affected by a disaster has a negative and robust impact on life satisfaction that disappears 6 to 8 months after the event. In our sample severe storms are the main culprit in the reduction of life satisfaction; droughts also have a negative impact on life satisfaction and exhibit a more persistent effect

Economic Value of Multi-peril Coastal Hazard Insurance

Expanding the National Flood Insurance Program to allow policyholders to purchase optional erosion coverage eliminate coverage disputes when erosion and flood both contribute to a loss, and provide affordable national erosion coverage. We examine the household welfare effect of multi-peril hazard insurance coverage by coupling information on NFIP policy in force with a survey data for a sample of coastal households in the US southeast. Our results indicate that the value of multi-peril hazard insurance is substantially higher for households who live in the coastal zone. We also test effect of risk perception (subjective risk assessment) on individuals’ decision to purchase multi-peril hazard insurance and find that higher risk perception lead to higher probability of purchasing multi-peril insurance coverage and increases the mean willingness to pay for insurance