Three Essays on Understanding Social and Economic Responses to Crisis and Disaster Events

Authors

Shahnawaz Mohammad Rafi, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

Economics

First Advisor's Name

Pallab Mozumder

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee chair

Second Advisor's Name

Berrak Bahadir

Second Advisor's Committee Title

committee member

Third Advisor's Name

Mahadev Bhat

Third Advisor's Committee Title

committee member

Fourth Advisor's Name

Ronald Cox

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

committee member

Keywords

Hurricane; Media Citation; ODA; Aid; Hedonic Model; Input-Output Model; Natural Disaster; Dynamic Inoperable Input Output Model

Date of Defense

7-1-2022

Abstract

The dissertation comprises three chapters that analyze the social and economic responses to crises and disasters. In the first chapter, I have investigated whether media affects the US official foreign aid channel or crisis related aid. I have examined natural disaster citations in four mainstream US newspapers to analyze whether they influence the Official Development Assistance (ODA) or the short-term crisis related aid need of a recipient following a natural disaster. I created three new media variables to measure the strength of media effect on US ODA, humanitarian aid, and food aid. The empirical analyses indicate that media citation only affects crisis related food and humanitarian assistance.

In the subsequent chapters I focus on the impacts of coastal hazards on affected communities. Every year hurricanes of different intensities make landfall in the US. The devastation and havoc of those hurricanes often have long-lasting effects on people's livelihood, infrastructure, and homes. The deadliest hurricane ever recorded in Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria, made landfall in 2017. In the second chapter, I investigated how the devastation of Hurricane Maria affected the housing prices in Puerto Rico. I gathered home sales data in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria from Zillow, a leading multiple listing service (MLS) platform for real estate transactions in the US. I combined the traditional hedonic price model with Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) to measure Hurricane Maria's causal (treatment) effect on housing prices in Puerto Rico.

In 2017, another hurricane (Hurricane Harvey) wreaked havoc in Texas. Floodwaters inundated homes in Texas and disrupted utility services. Hurricane Harvey resulted in significant economic and social consequences by disrupting public utility services such as power supply, telecommunication , and transportation. The interruption in one sector impacted the operation in other interdependent sectors. In the third chapter, I use household survey data that was collected following the event of Hurricane Harvey to analyze the performance of critical infrastructure systems and the impacts of utility disruptions in Houston, Texas. I incorporated the household survey responses into the Dynamic Inoperability Input-Output Model (DIIM) to estimate inoperability and economic losses in multiple linked sectors. This chapter also assessed the top ten inoperable (stalled) sectors in the affected area.

Identifier

FIDC010899

ORCID

https://orcid.org/

0000-0002-3482-9728

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Rafi, Shahnawaz Mohammad, "Three Essays on Understanding Social and Economic Responses to Crisis and Disaster Events" (2022). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 5094.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/5094