Medium-run local economic effects of a major earthquake

Abstract
Existing research is inconclusive regarding the longer-term economic effects of earthquakes. We examine the medium-run impacts of the 2010 earthquake in Chile, the sixth-largest ever recorded, using value-added tax collection as a proxy for economic activity at the municipal level and a measure of local ground-shaking intensity. We find that the affected municipalities suffered a relevant and persistent drop in their economic activity of about 10%, 8-9 years after the event. We discuss the plausibility of the assumption of conditional parallel trends and show that the overall results are robust to using alternative estimation methods.
Description
Keywords
Earthquake, economic impact, local economies
Citation