Capitalization of Flood Insurance and Risk Perceptions in Housing Prices: An Empirical Agent‐Based Model Approach

Federally regulated or insured lenders in the United States are mandated to require flood insurance on properties that are located in areas at high risk of flooding. Despite the existence of this mandatory flood insurance requirement, take‐up rates for flood insurance have been low, and the federal government's exposure to uninsured property losses from flooding remains substantial. Meanwhile, the value of capital at risk varies significantly with flood events and changing risk perceptions, which necessitates mechanisms that stabilize these dynamics. In this article we discuss how a scenario of complete insurance uptake, under various risk attitudes, affects the value of properties in the 100‐year and 500‐year flood zones. Our results indicate that an increase in flood insurance uptake may provide such a mechanism by lowering the value of capital at risk in the flood zone consistently, independent of homeowners' risk attitudes. We apply an empirical adaptive agent‐based model to examine the capitalization of insurance costs, risk premiums, and their interaction in housing prices. Our approach combines widely‐used empirical hedonic analysis with the computational economic framework. We highlight the usefulness of our method in capturing the marginal implicit price of homeowners' preferences that may change over time and separately assess the effect of various factors and policies on property values, illustrating the agent‐based modeling as a valuable complement to traditional hedonic analysis.     

Government spending and the distribution of economic growth

In the United States, total government spending, and especially government social spending, has increased greatly over the last 50 years. What effect this has had on economic growth is a subject of intense debate among politicians, policymakers, and economists. However, there has been less attention paid to the distributional effects of government spending even though economic inequality has grown greatly over the last generation and much social spending is at least indirectly intended to reduce inequality. The effects of government social spending in the United States on growth in family income at deciles of the income distribution were estimated. The results suggested that social spending but not non‐social spending was likely to increase growth in family income per capita measured over 10‐year intervals. The largest effects of social spending were for deciles below the median income. At no point in the distribution does social spending have a negative effect.     

基于灰色关联分析的达州历年洪灾等级评价研究

针对达州地区洪水灾害,从经济损失、农作物受灾情况、受灾人口、死亡人口、失踪人口和房屋倒塌情况六个方面构建评价指标,应用灰色关联模型计算达州地区近7年的洪灾灾情的关联度,确定每年的洪灾灾情等级。评价结果显示与达州的实际灾情比较相符,从而为当地洪灾灾情等级的综合评价提供依据。     

从应对全球经济失衡视角看东亚经济金融合作

经常项目收支失衡加剧是全球经济失衡的重要体现。近年来,以美国为一极的发达国家经常项目逆差急剧膨胀;而包括中国在内的东亚国家和地区的经常项目顺差不断扩张。由于经常项目赤字滚雪球般地急剧膨胀,加上美国储蓄率过低、财政赤字高涨,导致了美国对国际资本的巨大需求。而东亚地区由于汇率体制和对美经济依存等原因,被动地持有大量美元资产并向美国提供大量资金。全球国际收支失衡不断向主要几个国家和地区集中,从中长期来看这种不均衡现象是不可持续的,东亚国家面临极大的风险。这一背景下,加强东亚区域经济金融合作是必然的选择。     

沿海地区受台风影响的易损性指标体系与应急管理策略

台风灾害一直是威胁我国沿海地区经济社会发展的一个重大障碍。构建承灾体的社会经济易损性评价指标体系,运用统计学方法对沿海地区受台风影响的社会经济易损性进行实证分析后发现,我国沿海地区受台风影响的社会经济易损性空间分布不均匀。台风灾害频发的沿海地方政府应通过制定防台应急预案,构建全面的应急预警体系,建立统一的自然灾害信息系统和信息公开机制,引入政策性金融工具建立灾后恢复、补偿的财政保障机制,从而构建一个专门针对台风灾害的应急响应机制。     

Flood Risk and Salience: New Evidence from the Sunshine State

A growing literature finds evidence that flood risk salience varies over time, spiking directly following a flood and then falling off individuals' cognitive radar in the following years. In this article, we provide new evidence of salience exploiting a hurricane cluster impacting Florida that was preceded and followed by periods of unusual calm. Utilizing residential property sales across the state from 2002 through 2012, our main estimate finds a salience impact of ?8%, on average. The salience effect persists when we base estimation only on spatial variation in prices to limit confounding from other simultaneous changes due to shifting hedonic equilibria over time. These effects range from housing prices decreases of 5.4–12.3% depending on the year of sale. Understanding flood risk salience has important implications for flood insurance and disaster policy, the benefits transfer literature, and, more broadly, our understanding of natural disaster resilience. JEL Classification: Q51, Q54, R21     

Disaster risk reduction initiatives in South Africa

The field of disaster management in South Africa has developed dramatically over the past seven years. The paradigm shift from civil protection to disaster risk management brought with it the realisation that the management of disaster risk is paramount to reducing successfully the vulnerability of these communities most at risk. The resilience and coping mechanisms of communities affected by disasters have demonstrated the importance of local and traditional knowledge in the reduction of risk and the effects of hazards. This article aims to explore various initiatives for disaster risk reduction in South Africa undertaken by government departments and non-governmental organisations from 1994 to 2003. It describes the various methods and systems employed to reduce risk and vulnerability. A case study of the February 2000 floods in the Limpopo province of South Africa provides insight into local coping mechanisms and indigenous methods of risk reduction.     

南四湖湖区增蓄雨洪资源资产研究

雨洪资源在缓解区域水资源短缺、供用水矛盾等方面具有较大的潜力和价值.从水资源资产价值的角度出发,利用雨洪资源与经济社会发展的关系,定义了雨洪资源资产并提出了雨洪水资源资产的计算方法.该方法应用到南四湖流域,以南四湖湖区通过抬高汛限水位增蓄的雨洪资源为例,综合考虑水量、水质因素,联合区域社会经济发展水平,以全国各省(市、自治区)为参照构建全国平均用水水平的计算标准,开展南四湖湖区增蓄雨洪资源的资产价值量计算.结果表明,南四湖湖区增蓄雨洪资源的总资产及人均资产分别为244.46亿元、1001.60元/m3.计算结果可为下一步南四湖湖区雨洪资源的区域调用和实现雨洪资源管理与社会经济与生态的协调发展提供理论支撑.     

Flood Insurance and Risk Reduction: Market Penetration,Coverage, and Mitigation in Coastal North Carolina

This article provides an overview of flood risk management in the United States, focusing on the National Flood Insurance Program and the Community Ratings System (CRS), which is designed to promote flood hazard mitigation. We review the empirical literature that examines market penetration and demand for flood insurance, as well as factors that influence community participation in CRS. Combining data from separate (but similar) surveys conducted in Dare County, North Carolina in 1998 and 2008, we examine trends in flood insurance holdings and explore the extensive (binary participation) and intensive (coverage level) margins using regression analysis. We explore trends in CRS mitigation activities in Dare County and discuss potential difficulties in analyzing these data. Finally, we highlight avenues for future research.     

Measuring Heterogeneous Price Effects for Home Acquisition Programs in At‐Risk Regions

Any entity offering flood insurance, whether it is private or government‐administered such as the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), faces the challenge of solvency. This is especially true for the NFIP, where homeowner affordability criteria limit the opportunity to charge fully risk‐based premiums. One solution is to remove the highest flood risk properties from the insurer's book of business. Acquisition (buyout) of flood‐prone structures is a potentially permanent solution that eliminates the highest risk properties while providing homeowners with financial assistance to relocate in a less risky location. To encourage participation, homeowners are offered a preflood fair market value of their damaged (or at risk of damage) structures. Although many factors have been shown to affect a homeowner's decision to accept an acquisition offer, very little research has been devoted to the influence of price or monetary incentive offered on homeowners' willingness to participate in acquisition programs. We estimate a pooled probit model and employ a bootstrap methodology to determine the effects of hypothetical home price offers on homeowners' acquisition decisions. We do so while controlling for environmental factors, property characteristics, and homeowner sociodemographic characteristics. Results show that price indeed has a positive effect on likelihood of accepting an acquisition contract. Furthermore, estimated homeowner supply curves differ significantly based on the damage status of the acquisition offer, as well as homeowner and property characteristics.     

Enforcement,Socioeconomic Diversity,and Tax Filing Compliance in the United States

In this article, we examine the determinants of tax filing compliance in the United States. We use county‐level data on non‐filing rates for the tax year 2000, obtained directly from the Internal Revenue Service. We include explanatory variables identified in the “rational compliance” framework, including an enforcement index against identified non‐filers, the audit rate of filers, and the average penalty rate for both filers and non‐filers. We also examine the role of socioeconomic diversity on tax compliance, testing whether within‐county heterogeneity in household income, language, race, and religion can help explain variation in non‐filing rates. We find that non‐filing is increasing with heterogeneity by race, although not by income or language, and that non‐filing is decreasing with heterogeneity by religious membership. As for enforcement variables, we find that non‐filing rates tend to fall with the enforcement index. Other variables have somewhat mixed results.     

Size and Structure of Disaster Relief when State Capacity is Limited: China’s 1823 Flood

This paper presents new archival evidence about the amount and structure of central government disaster relief during China’s devastating flood of 1823. The flood affected 20 per cent of China’s counties, and spending per capita was sizable and distributed between provinces depending on the intensity of flooding. Because of its relative small size and limited state capacity, the Chinese government ultimately spent about half of its annual tax revenues on relief during 1823. Given China’s ensuing secular economic stagnation, this is consistent with models emphasising state capacity for economic growth.     

东亚区域合作新态势及中国的战略调整

1997年东南亚金融危机使东亚各国认识到域内合作的重要性,东亚区域合作蓬勃发展。十年之后的美国次贷危机演变成全球金融危机,客观上推动东亚区域合作呈现出了一些新态势。与此同时,鉴于中国及东亚各国当前面临的发展问题,东亚区域合作应在遵循东盟主导的基础上开拓互联互通务实合作,增强区域凝聚力和内生发展动力,提升合作的机制化水平,实现区域内经济的可持续发展。     

Heading for the Hills? Effects of Community Flood Management on Local Adaptation to Flood Risks

The Community Rating System (CRS) program was implemented by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1990 as an optional program to encourage communities to voluntarily engage in flood mitigation initiatives. This article uses national census tract‐level data from 1980 to 2010 to estimate whether CRS participation and flood risk affect a community's local patterns of population change. We employ an instrumental‐variables strategy to address the potential endogeneity of CRS participation, based on community‐scale demographic factors that predict when a tract's host community joins the CRS. The results find significant effects of the CRS program and flood risk on population change. Taken together, the findings point to greater propensity for community‐scale flood management in areas with more newcomers and programs such as CRS stabilizing population, though not especially in flood‐prone areas. We observe the CRS neither displacing population toward lower‐risk areas nor attracting more people to flood‐prone areas.     

洪涝灾区养猪场户生产恢复行为影响因素的实证分析——基于山东省潍坊市7个县（市、区）的调查

2018年8月,山东省潍坊市爆发了特大洪涝灾害,寿光等7个县(市、区)的养猪场户受灾严重,洪涝灾区养猪场户生产恢复状况成为政府和社会各界时刻关注的热点问题。基于230个养猪场户的调查数据,运用Logit模型实证分析了洪涝灾区养猪场户生产恢复行为的影响因素。研究结果表明:在230个受访养猪场户中,有52.61%选择恢复生产,有47.39%放弃恢复生产并转行;家庭年均收入、养殖年限、是否参加养殖合作组织、养猪业前景预测、有无政府扶持、有无金融机构优惠、有无社会捐助等7个因素对洪涝灾区养猪场户生产恢复行为具有显著影响。     

论冷战时期美国对泰国的经济援助

冷战时期泰国是美国在东南亚的重要盟友,美国长期向泰国提供大量经济援助,涉及农业、公共卫生、教育、交通、乡村发展等重要领域,有助于推动泰国经济和社会的发展。     

Climate Forecasts and Flood Mitigation

There is growing evidence that flood mitigation is often inefficient because individuals misestimate flood risk. The propensity to misestimate flood risk is expected to rise because climate change ensures the past will be a poor predictor of the future. Greater reliance on downscaled climatological and hydrological forecasts has been suggested to address these information failures. This article combines stochastic dynamic programming with historical data and climate‐driven streamflow projections to determine how changes in flood risk forecasts influence optimal investments in flood mitigation infrastructure. Using upgrades in California's levee system as an example, we show that climate change is causing benefit–cost analysis to become increasingly biased in favor of flood mitigation infrastructure projects. We also show that using downscaled hydroclimate forecasts to achieve more accurate estimates of flood risk can decrease the efficiency of flood mitigation infrastructure investments, if flood risk is currently overestimated. JEL Classification: D81 Q25 Q54     

Does Increased Funding for Homeless Programs Reduce Chronic Homelessness?

This article tests whether programs that provide housing assistance to homeless people can reduce chronic homelessness. I analyze data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for 130 communities across the United States over the period 2005 to 2007. Because the amount of federal money allocated to a community to combat homelessness may depend on unobserved characteristics of that community, I estimate a fixed‐effects model that estimates the effect of new federal homeless funding on chronic homelessness. I find that the first‐year cost of moving one chronically homeless person into permanent supportive housing is $55,600. An analysis of new funding to specific types of homeless programs indicates that programs that provide long‐term housing and services to homeless people with disabilities drives this relationship.     

严格责任与绝对责任之比较分析——有关产品损坏的社会成本最小化的有效标准

严格责任是现代国际产品责任法最主要的归则原则,但近年来这一责任愈趋严格,尤其在美国严格责任正在向绝对责任转变。但基于经济学原理,绝对责任不利于实现产品社会成本的最小化,特别在全球经济危机的严峻形势下,美国多项刺激措施对危机无明显效果,确立严格责任的规则原则以降低产品有关的社会成本,未尝不是一种尝试。