scholarly journals The Impact of Natural Disasters on Economic Growth

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Cavallo ◽  
Oscar Becerra ◽  
Laura Acevedo

This paper estimates the impact of catastrophic natural disasters on economic growth using an event study methodology on a country panel dataset from 1970 to 2019. The severity of the events is determined by the associated mortality. We find that affected economies which, given the way natural disasters are ranked, comprise mainly developing countries, suffer an average loss between 2.1 and 3.7 percentage points (p.p.). The estimated loss is not offset by above-average growth rates in the disasters aftermath. In contrast, when the severity of the events is determined by physical intensity rather than by mortality, which implies a more balanced estimating sample of developed and developing economies, the estimated effects on growth are negligible. Thus, the negative impacts of natural disasters on economic growth are larger for poorer countries, suggesting that the impact of natural disasters on growth is an economic development issue.

1996 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Mick Swartz

This paper examines the firm's opting out decision and the impact of the 1990 Pennsylvania Antitakeover Law on the stock prices of 123 firms. The results indicate that on average Pennsylvania stock returns decreased by 9 percent from introduction to passage. A comparison indicates that firms that opted out had CARs 18 percentage points higher than firms that chose not to opt out. The event study methodology may not be appropriate because investors may anticipate the passage of legislation and because there may be multiple events. Intervention analysis, an econometric technique not previously used in this area, is applied and the results support the agency cost hypothesis. A logit model is implemented to find the sources of the losses and gains and to study why firms choose to opt out. In this model, firms are controlled for antitakeover amendments, takeover activity, insider holdings, large noninsider holdings, size, and industry. Firms with a proxy for lower agency costs were found to be more likely to opt out of the legislation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 83-108
Author(s):  
Anusha Chari ◽  
Peter Blair Henry ◽  
Hector Reyes

In 1985, James A. Baker III's “Program for Sustained Growth” proposed a set of economic policy reforms including, inflation stabilization, trade liberalization, greater openness to foreign investment, and privatization, that he believed would lead to faster growth in countries then known as the Third World, but now categorized as emerging and developing economies (EMDEs). A country-specific, time-series assessment of the reform process reveals three clear facts. First, in the ten-year period after stabilizing high inflation, the average growth rate of real GDP in EMDEs is 2.6 percentage points higher than in the prior ten-year period. Second, the corresponding growth increase for trade liberalization episodes is 2.66 percentage points. Third, in the decade after opening their capital markets to foreign equity investment, the spread between EMDEs average cost of equity capital and that of the US declines by 240 basis points. The impact of privatization is less straightforward to assess, but taken together, the three central facts of reform provide empirical support for the Baker Hypothesis and suggest a simple neoclassical interpretation of the unprecedented increase in growth that has taken place in EMDEs since the early 1990s.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 31 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Ruiz ◽  
Marcelo Barrero

The 2010 Chilean earthquake and tsunami were among the strongest in the world history. The exogeneity of these natural disasters provides the opportunity to test stock price reactions. Using a sample of 42 firms listed in the Santiago Stock Exchange, we develop an event study methodology considering heterogeneity in volatility. Chilean stock market volatility increased by 240% (120%) during the 5 (11) trading days after the earthquake. The results are informative about the behavior of the stock prices: returns are positive in sectors the retail, real estate, and banking sectors and negative in food, steel, and forestry. Insurance coverage decreases the impact on economic growth.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 2418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Singh ◽  
Richard Nyuur ◽  
Ben Richmond

Renewable energy is being increasingly touted as the “fuel of the future,” which will help to reconcile the prerogatives of high economic growth and an economically friendly development trajectory. This paper seeks to examine relationships between renewable energy production and economic growth and the differential impact on both developed and developing economies. We employed the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) regression model to a sample of 20 developed and developing countries for the period 1995–2016. Our key empirical findings reveal that renewable energy production is associated with a positive and statistically significant impact on economic growth in both developed and developing countries for the period 1995–2016. Our results also show that the impact of renewable energy production on economic growth is higher in developing economies, as compared to developed economies. In developed countries, an increase in renewable energy production leads to a 0.07 per cent rise in output, compared to only 0.05 per cent rise in output for developing countries. These findings have important implications for policymakers and reveal that renewable energy production can offer an environmentally sustainable means of economic growth in the future.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 23-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Brogi ◽  
Valentina Lagasio

Are press releases on Corporate Governance price sensitive? What is the impact of Corporate Governance information on stock prices of banks? This paper addresses these questions by applying an event study methodology on 70 press releases published by the Euro area banks listed on the Eurostoxx banks Index, from 2007 to 2016. Systemic shocks are explored as well idiosyncratic ones. Our results show that investment decisions are significantly but negatively influenced by the disclosure of a press release on corporate governance as if this kind of news leads investors to perceive the banks’ prospects negatively. The best of our knowledge this is the first paper that investigates European banks press releases on corporate governance. Findings are relevant for banks’ management and their disclosure policy. Nonetheless, further research is needed to investigate differences and similarities between an area of governance disclosure and another.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-108
Author(s):  
Sabat Kumar Digal ◽  
Yashmin Khatun ◽  
Braja Sundar Seet

The financial sector, because of its catalytic role in the economy, has always been in the eye of the storm in economic difficulties. Due to the pandemic, the stock market had lost about 27 percent by April 2020 and bank nifty has had a lion’s share in pushing the index down to this level. Uncertainty arose as the containment of the disease and the availability of vaccines remain uncertain; this contributed to the plunge in investor confidence. Because of the central role of banks in the development initiatives of the governments, COVID-19 has become a significant threat to the sustainability of the banks globally, especially in developing economies. However, we believe every downfall brings in new opportunities for the investors. Therefore, the present study attempted to study both the gloom and boon and observed that there were short-term abnormal returns to the investors of nifty banks in two different periods - the detection of the first case of COVID-19 in India and the lockdown periods in India. The impacts of both the events are calculated by applying Market and Risk Adjusted model, Market Adjusted Return model and Mean Adjusted Return model. The paper concludes that the impacts were insignificant during the first period and was quite significant in the subsequent period. Nifty banks have earned negative abnormal returns during the pre-lockdown period and positive abnormal returns during post lockdown period which indicates that the markets reacted positively as India implemented the first lockdown.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehdi Seraj ◽  
Cagay Coskuner ◽  
Seyi Saint Akadiri ◽  
Negar Bahadori

Abstract This study revisited Dani Rodrik (2008) work on real exchange rate undervaluation and economic growth by using the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) and Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (DOLS). This research, to the best of authors' knowledge, is the first to use FMOLS and DOLS approach to empirically evaluate Rodrik work on the real exchange rate and economic growth using a Panel periodic data (six sets of five years) of 82 countries throughout 1990 to 2018. We used the Balassa Samuelson method to estimate the predicted real exchange rate and real exchange rate undervaluation. Finally, the study is in support of Rodrik conclusion that, real exchange undervaluation has a significant impact on the economic growth of the developing economies and statistically insignificant in the developed economies.


Author(s):  
Rob Kim Marjerison

This chapter begins with a brief exploration of the importance of entrepreneurial activity as a driver of global economic growth. The importance of entrepreneurship in developing economies is examined as are the traits, motivations, and drivers of entrepreneurs and the economic, social, cultural, legislative, and regulatory circumstances that encourage and in some cases discourage entrepreneurial activity. The impact of entrepreneurship training and education on encouraging women entrepreneurs is examined, the relative importance of women entrepreneurs is examined, and emphasis is placed on the relatively greater difficulties that are faced by women entrepreneurs particularly in regards to obtaining funding for starting new ventures. Opportunities are identified that may useful for policy makers, investors, and those that may seek to promote social entrepreneurship and economic growth in developing economies.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Ato Forson ◽  
Rosemary Afrakomah Opoku ◽  
Michael Owusu Appiah ◽  
Evans Kyeremeh ◽  
Ibrahim Anyass Ahmed ◽  
...  

PurposeThe significant impact of innovation in stimulating economic growth cannot be overemphasized, more importantly from policy perspective. For this reason, the relationship between innovation and economic growth in developing economies such as the ones in Africa has remained topical. Yet, innovation as a concept is multi-dimensional and cannot be measured by just one single variable. With hindsight of the traditional measures of innovation in literature, we augment it with the number of scientific journals published in the region to enrich this discourse.Design/methodology/approachWe focus on an approach that explores innovation policy qualitatively from various policy documents of selected countries in the region from three policy perspectives (i.e. institutional framework, financing and diffusion and interaction). We further investigate whether innovation as perceived differently is important for economic growth in 25 economies in sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1990–2016. Instrumental variable estimation of a threshold regression is used to capture the contributions of innovation as a multi-dimensional concept on economic growth, while dealing with endogeneity between the regressors and error term.FindingsThe results from both traditional panel regressions and IV panel threshold regressions show a positive relationship between innovation and economic growth, although the impact seems negligible. Institutional quality dampens innovation among low-regime economies, and the relation is persistent regardless of when the focus is on aggregate or decomposed institutional factors. The impact of innovation on economic growth in most regressions is robust to different dimensions of innovation. Yet, the coefficients of the innovation variables in the two regimes are quite dissimilar. While most countries in the region have offered financial support in the form of budgetary allocations to strengthen institutions, barriers to the design and implementation of innovation policies may be responsible for the sluggish contribution of innovation to the growth pattern of the region.Originality/valueSegregating economies of Africa into two distinct regimes based on a threshold of investment in education as a share of GDP in order to understand the relationship between innovation and economic growth is quite novel. This lends credence to the fact that innovation as a multifaceted concept does not take place by chance – it is carefully planned. We have enriched the discourse of innovation and thus helped in deepening understanding on this contentious subject.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-67
Author(s):  
Wing Him Yeung ◽  
Yilisha Pang ◽  
Asad Aman

South–South cooperation has been on the rise in recent years. One of the latest examples is the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) proposed by the Chinese and Pakistani governments in 2013. Using event study methodology, this article examines the impact of events and announcements associated with CPEC on the Pakistan Stock Exchange in Pakistan and the Shanghai Stock Exchange in China. The first key finding of this article is that the initial announcement associated with CPEC had stronger and positive short-term impact on the Pakistan Stock Exchange in comparison with the impact of subsequent CPEC events on the stock market. The second key finding is that the short-term impact of the CPEC initial announcement was stronger on the Pakistan Stock Exchange than on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, possibly due to the substantial difference in the size of the two economies. The empirical results of this article have important implications for investors, corporations and regulators to the Global South.


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