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Aotearoa New Zealand is highly vulnerable to extratropical cyclones because of its unique location in the midlatitude south pacific region. This study empirically investigates the impact of the extratropical cyclones on individual income, combining the data from Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) and the weather-related insurance claims data from the Earthquake Commission. Our sample covers the administrative longitudinal panel data of all the IRD registered individual taxpayers between 2010 and 2019. We estimate a set of panel regressions with individual and time-fixed effects to assess the impact of extratropical cyclones on the affected individual’s annual income. We find that income from salaries and wages is negatively affected by the cyclones across various specifications. Extratropical cyclones also negatively affect the total individual income from wages and salaries, benefit and compensation, and sole tradership. However, we have limited success in identifying individual characteristics influencing the affected people's income level in our study.

Aotearoa New Zealand is highly vulnerable to extratropical cyclones because of its unique location in the midlatitude south pacific region. This study empirically investigates the impact of the extratropical cyclones on individual income, combining the data from Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) and the weather-related insurance claims data from the Earthquake Commission. Our sample covers the administrative longitudinal panel data of all the IRD registered individual taxpayers between 2010 and 2019. We estimate a set of panel regressions with individual and time-fixed effects to assess the impact of extratropical cyclones on the affected individual’s annual income. We find that income from salaries and wages is negatively affected by the cyclones across various specifications. Extratropical cyclones also negatively affect the total individual income from wages and salaries, benefit and compensation, and sole tradership. However, we have limited success in identifying individual characteristics influencing the affected people's income level in our study.

We examine the influence of introducing public authority liability in the context of disasters. In an ideal setting a rule of comparative negligence would incentivise the government to take an optimal amount of care. The citizen, being the residual bearer of the loss, would consequently also take optimal care. However, in the specific context of disasters, public authority liability may backfire and lead to more losses than without such liability. We argue that under some circumstances perverse incentives of citizens may increase with liability. We focus inter alia on (1) the difficulties that may exist to incentivise public authorities through liability rules, (2) the specific characteristics of comparative negligence that may make public authorities liable for the lion’s share of the damages, (3) the problem of negative expected value suits and (4) the fact that public authorities may be much more inclined to intervene ex post when damages exceed a threshold.

Just as in many other regions of the world, the European Union is prone to nearly all types of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. Moreover, due to climate change, both the number of incidents and the damage from natural disasters could increase. Natural disasters may cause significant economic losses, and consequently there is a strong demand for compensation for victims in their aftermath. We examine whether, from a theoretical perspective, there is any role to be played at the EU level in the compensation of victims of disasters, particularly in disaster insurance, and even if it were to be just a facilitative role, how this role could take shape in order to stimulate the insurability of natural disasters. We critically examine European initiatives with respect to disaster insurance and ex post compensation and formulate lessons learned on the basis of the theoretical analysis. We explicitly address the question whether the role of the EU should be limited to facilitating insurability or whether it should include providing ex post compensation to states as well.

We examine the influence of introducing public authority liability in the context of disasters. In an ideal setting a rule of comparative negligence would incentivise the government to take an optimal amount of care. The citizen, being the residual bearer of the loss, would consequently also take optimal care. However, in the specific context of disasters, public authority liability may backfire and lead to more losses than without such liability. We argue that under some circumstances perverse incentives of citizens may increase with liability. We focus inter alia on (1) the difficulties that may exist to incentivise public authorities through liability rules, (2) the specific characteristics of comparative negligence that may make public authorities liable for the lion’s share of the damages, (3) the problem of negative expected value suits and (4) the fact that public authorities may be much more inclined to intervene ex post when damages exceed a threshold.

Just as in many other regions of the world, the European Union is prone to nearly all types of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. Moreover, due to climate change, both the number of incidents and the damage from natural disasters could increase. Natural disasters may cause significant economic losses, and consequently there is a strong demand for compensation for victims in their aftermath. We examine whether, from a theoretical perspective, there is any role to be played at the EU level in the compensation of victims of disasters, particularly in disaster insurance, and even if it were to be just a facilitative role, how this role could take shape in order to stimulate the insurability of natural disasters. We critically examine European initiatives with respect to disaster insurance and ex post compensation and formulate lessons learned on the basis of the theoretical analysis. We explicitly address the question whether the role of the EU should be limited to facilitating insurability or whether it should include providing ex post compensation to states as well.

We aim to investigate the role of insurance in business recovery following the devastating Christchurch earthquake in February, 22nd, 2011. We analyze data from two business surveys conducted after the earthquake to examine how insurance affected business operation in the aftermath of the earthquake both in the short-term and longer-term. For the short-term analysis, we use a combination of propensity score matching (PSM) and linear probability model (LPM) to analyze the data. We first estimate the propensity scores for insurance take-up of each firm conditional on the firm’s individual characteristics. Stratification based on the estimated propensity scores is used to match the treated (insured) and the control (uninsured) firms. We then estimate the probability of firms’ continuing operations with a set of control variables to account for the level of damage and disruption caused by the quake in each stratum. We find little evidence of any beneficial effect of insurance coverage on business continuity in the short-run. For the longer-term analysis, we analyze the available survey data using logistic regression. The result suggests that business interruption insurance significantly promotes increased level of long-term productivity for surviving firms following the earthquake.

We aim to investigate the role of insurance in business recovery following the devastating Christchurch earthquake in February, 22nd, 2011. We analyze data from two business surveys conducted after the earthquake to examine how insurance affected business operation in the aftermath of the earthquake both in the short-term and longer-term. For the short-term analysis, we use a combination of propensity score matching (PSM) and linear probability model (LPM) to analyze the data. We first estimate the propensity scores for insurance take-up of each firm conditional on the firm’s individual characteristics. Stratification based on the estimated propensity scores is used to match the treated (insured) and the control (uninsured) firms. We then estimate the probability of firms’ continuing operations with a set of control variables to account for the level of damage and disruption caused by the quake in each stratum. We find little evidence of any beneficial effect of insurance coverage on business continuity in the short-run. For the longer-term analysis, we analyze the available survey data using logistic regression. The result suggests that business interruption insurance significantly promotes increased level of long-term productivity for surviving firms following the earthquake.

We aim to investigate the role of insurance in business recovery following the devastating Christchurch earthquake in February, 22nd, 2011. We analyze data from two business surveys conducted after the earthquake to examine how insurance affected business operation in the aftermath of the earthquake both in the short-term and longer-term. For the short-term analysis, we use a combination of propensity score matching (PSM) and linear probability model (LPM) to analyze the data. We first estimate the propensity scores for insurance take-up of each firm conditional on the firm’s individual characteristics. Stratification based on the estimated propensity scores is used to match the treated (insured) and the control (uninsured) firms. We then estimate the probability of firms’ continuing operations with a set of control variables to account for the level of damage and disruption caused by the quake in each stratum. We find little evidence of any beneficial effect of insurance coverage on business continuity in the short-run. For the longer-term analysis, we analyze the available survey data using logistic regression. The result suggests that business interruption insurance significantly promotes increased level of long-term productivity for surviving firms following the earthquake.

We aim to investigate the role of insurance in business recovery following the devastating Christchurch earthquake in February, 22nd, 2011. We analyze data from two business surveys conducted after the earthquake to examine how insurance affected business operation in the aftermath of the earthquake both in the short-term and longer-term. For the short-term analysis, we use a combination of propensity score matching (PSM) and linear probability model (LPM) to analyze the data. We first estimate the propensity scores for insurance take-up of each firm conditional on the firm’s individual characteristics. Stratification based on the estimated propensity scores is used to match the treated (insured) and the control (uninsured) firms. We then estimate the probability of firms’ continuing operations with a set of control variables to account for the level of damage and disruption caused by the quake in each stratum. We find little evidence of any beneficial effect of insurance coverage on business continuity in the short-run. For the longer-term analysis, we analyze the available survey data using logistic regression. The result suggests that business interruption insurance significantly promotes increased level of long-term productivity for surviving firms following the earthquake.