How droughts change specialization of countries?

International audienc

Natural Disasters Shocks on Trade

L’histoire de la planète a toujours été marquée par des catastrophes naturelles. Néanmoins, leurs impacts sur le commerce international ont été très peu explorés. La présente thèse tente donc, de contribuer à cette littérature, en mettant l’accent sur les pays en développement et leur secteur agricole, particulièrement vulnérable aux chocs. Le premier chapitre se propose d’analyser les effetsdes catastrophes naturelles sur le commerce total. Nous montrons que les exportations ne souffrent pas, systématiquement, de la survenu d’un désastre. Dès lors, le chapitre 2, cherche à identifier les canaux de transmission, et laisse place aux modèles de commerce bilatéral. Nous montrons que les catastrophes naturelles peuvent affecter les exportations agricoles aux travers de trois mécanismes :un effet de capabilité, un effet d’expédition et un effet de préférence. Enfin, le chapitre 3 s’intéresse au rôle joué par les sécheresses dans le changement de spécialisation d’un pays. Nous montrons qu’un déficit de précipitation s’accompagne d’un changement des exportations à moyen terme.The history of the planet has always been marked by natural disasters. Nevertheless, their impacts on trade have been little explored. This thesis tries to bring to light the relationship between natural disasters and trade. A special attention was given to developing countries and their agricultural sector which is known to be particularly vulnerable to these shocks. The chapter 1 proposes to analyse the effect of natural disasters on total trade. We show that agricultural exports do not decrease ina systematic way in the aftermath of catastrophes. Therefore, the chapter 2 seeks to identify the transmission channels; and relies on bilateral trade models. We show that natural disasters affect agricultural exports through three mechanisms: a capability channel, a shipment channel and a preference channel. Finally, the chapter 3 explores the role played by drought in change of country‘s specialization. We show that a lack of precipitation leads to a change in exports at middle term

Natural Disasters, Bilateral Exports and Foreign Consumers' Altruism

International audienceThis paper highlights different channels through which natural disasters affect exports of agricultural products in developing countries, along different mechanisms arising from supply and demand. By using disaster variables (occurrence and intensity) from EM-DAT and GeoMet datasets with trade data at the 6 digit-HS level, our first estimates point to a non-robust relationship between disasters and agricultural exports from developing countries. We then argue that this non-statistical relationship hides two opposite effects: one supply effect negative on exports (i.e. reduction in capabilities of production); and a foreign demand effect (ie. altruism hypothesis), positive on exports. Using complementary data sources on a subset of products at hand, we could detect a supply effect. More interestingly, we were able to estimate a new demand effect across many alternative identifying variables, methods and controls. The detection of this positive effect, consistent with foreign consumers’ altruism, is new in the literature. It explains at least partly why disasters might not lead to very important falls in exports in developing countries

Natural Disasters and Countries' Exports: New Insights from a New (and an Old) Database

This paper is the first to uncover in details the impact of different families of disasters on exports from 1979 to 2000 (storms, floods, earthquakes and changes in temperatures). Besides, our paper is the first to compare in a quasi-systematic way the results across the two datasets at hand, the standard \emph{EM-DAT} data and \emph{GeoMet} data, a newly available dataset based on geophysical and meteorological data (\citet{Felbermayr2013} and \citet{Felbermayr2014}). We run series of regressions while accounting progressively for the characteristics of products (all traded goods v/s agriculture ones), the characteristics of the country (size, level of development) and the intensity of the catastrophes. When pooling all countries, and all types of disasters, we do not find any statistical impact on exports. But when focusing on each of them separately and on agricultural goods, the occurrence of an earthquake appears to reduce exports of about 3\%, regardless of its location. A windstorm shock, even when it happens to be very severe, has hardly any impact. A flood, on its side, is estimated to reduce export flows of a small country by nearly 3\%. The effect of changes in temperatures is ambiguous. All in all, except for temperatures related disasters, the results are consistent across both datasets, EM-DAT and GeoMet, although they appear to be slightly more in line with our expectations in the case of GeoMet

A database of the economic impacts of historical volcanic eruptions

History has shown that economic consequences of a volcanic eruption can be disastrous, and nowadays 800 million people in 86 different countries are living within 100 km of an active or a potentially active volcano. Eruptions can cause significant economic loss and damage directly (eruptive processes) or indirectly (associated non-eruptive processes like lahars, tsunamis, etc.), and through cascading effects (perturbations on transport, networks, etc.). Loss and damages can then be direct, indirect, tangible or intangible, short-term or long-term, also depending on the exposure and vulnerability of the economic activities. Existing database on historical eruptions do not provide, or too sparsely, information on these economic impacts. The aim of the project presented in this paper is to build a new database to increase our understanding in the field, to facilitate the identification of vulnerability and resilience factors to future events. We first selected a sample of 55 eruptions from 42 volcanoes located in 18 developing and developed countries, that occurred after the World War II. We documented a number of physical characteristics of these eruptions and volcanoes. Second, we identified the different damages and losses due to volcanic events through 37 qualitative and quantitative variables. We collected economic information and data on these variables, using a variety of sources (governmental and non-governmental agencies, academic institutions, volcanic observatories, press, etc.). This database will be accessible through a web interface and the community will be able to contribute to its development by recording information on the economic consequences of past and future events. A next step would consist in extrapolating the economic impacts for those historical eruptions with missing data and of those that are not included in our first sample

Why Natural Disasters Might Not Lead to a Fall in Exports in Developing Countries?

This paper tries to identify the different channels through which natural disastersaffect exports of agricultural products in developing countries. It begins by presentinga simple theory set-up that highlights the different mechanisms at work. It then takessome predictions of this theory to the test. Matching different sets of disaster variables(occurrence and intensity) from EM-DAT and GeoMet datasets with trade data at the 6digit-HS level, our first estimate point to a negative but statistically non-robust relationbetween disasters and agricultural exports. Following our theory set-up, we attribute thisresult to mixing three confounding effects with different magnitudes and opposite signs ontrade. Using other sources of data, we could then identify two of the effects: a negativeand statistically significant effect of disasters on exports when they occur in rural areasand at growing seasons times; and a positive and (very) robust relation with exportstowards culturally close partners and where an important diaspora is settled. This pointsto show that disasters are redistributing exports across partners. However, the ’solidarity’-consistent effect does not seem to last over time. All in all, notably due to the limitedphysical impact of most of the disasters over time and space and thanks to the pain reliefprovided by culturally close importers, natural disasters do not appear to make smalldeveloping countries suffer that much economically

EIVE - Economic Impacts of Volcanic Eruptions

El Hadri H., Goujon M. and Paris R. present the database of the economic impacts of historical volcanic eruptions.Présentation vidéo de la base de données EIVE réalisée par deux économistes et un volcanologue

EIVE - Economic Impacts of Volcanic Eruptions

El Hadri H., Goujon M. and Paris R. present the database of the economic impacts of historical volcanic eruptions.Présentation vidéo de la base de données EIVE réalisée par deux économistes et un volcanologue

EIVE - Economic Impacts of Volcanic Eruptions

El Hadri H., Goujon M. and Paris R. present the database of the economic impacts of historical volcanic eruptions.Présentation vidéo de la base de données EIVE réalisée par deux économistes et un volcanologue