The impact of flood hazards on local employment

Abstract

In a spatial model of aggregate municipal employment, this article shows statistically that floods disrupt employment in municipalities. Flood events decrease local employment on average by 3.4%. Employment levels, however, recover after one year.

Notes

¹ Early work by Carlino (1978), documents location choice in the manufacturing industry.

² The urbanization indicator ranks municipalities with respect to urbanization in categories. The first category, for example, includes municipalities located in metropolitan areas with populations of one million or more; a mid-range urban area in the ranking has an urban population of 20 000 or more, but not adjacent to a metropolitan area; and the category for least urbanization is a completely rural or less than 2500 urban population, not adjacent to a metropolitan area.