Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:54:31.144Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economic impact of floods in the Indian states

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2019

Yashobanta Parida Open the ORCID record for Yashobanta Parida [Opens in a new window]
Yashobanta Parida*
Affiliation:
Centre for International Trade and Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India VKCoE, Institute of Rural Management, Anand, Gujarat, India
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We examine the impact of economic development and the role of political alignment on the fatalities and damages due to floods using state-level panel data for 19 Indian states over the period 1980–2011. The empirical results confirm that economic development leads to a decline in flood fatalities and damages due to floods across Indian states. This study also examines the role of politics in the prevention of flood fatalities. We find that both state election years and political alignment influence the extent of flood fatalities. The results suggest that not only economic development but also healthy political coordination between the central government and the states is essential to mitigate the impact of floods.

Keywords

economic developmentflood fatalitiesIV-Poisson modelIV-Tobit modelpolitical alignment

JEL classification

Q54: Climate • Natural Disasters and Their Management • Global Warming O1: Economic Development P16: Political Economy
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , June 2020 , pp. 267 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allison, PD and Waterman, RP (2002) Fixed-effects negative binomial regression models. Sociological Methodology 32, 247–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anbarci, N, Escaleras, M and Register, CA (2005) Earthquake fatalities: the interaction of nature and political economy. Journal of Public Economics 89, 1907–1933.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besley, T and Burgess, R (2002) The political economy of government responsiveness: theory and evidence from India. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 117, 1415–1451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, AC and Trivedi, PK (2010) Microeconometrics Using Stata, vol. 2. College Station, TX: Stata Press.Google Scholar
Central Water Commission (CWC) (2012) State-wise Data on Damage Caused due to Floods During 1953–2011. New Delhi, India: Government of India. Available at https://www.indiawaterportal.org/sites/indiawaterportal.org/files/ffm.2200-2291.27112012.pdf.Google Scholar
Chang, CP and Berdiev, AN (2015) Do natural disasters increase the likelihood that a government is replaced? Applied Economics 47, 1788–1808.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downton, MW and Pielke, RA Jr. (2001) Discretion without accountability: politics, flood damage, and climate. Natural Hazards Review 2: 157–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Escaleras, M, Anbarci, N and Register, CA (2007) Public sector corruption and major earthquakes: a potentially deadly interaction. Public Choice 132, 209–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferreira, S, Hamilton, K and Vincent, JR (2013) Does development reduce fatalities from natural disasters? New evidence for floods. Environment and Development Economics 18, 649–679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, TA and Sobel, RS (2003) Political economy of FEMA disaster payments. Economic Inquiry 41, 496–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs (2011) Disaster Management in India. New Delhi, India: Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs. Available at https://www.undp.org/content/dam/india/docs/disaster_management_in_india.pdf.Google Scholar
Government of India Planning Commission (2011) Report of Working Group on Flood Management and Region Specific Issues for XII Plan. New Delhi, India: Government of India Planning Commission. Available at http://www.zaragoza.es/contenidos/medioambiente/onu/985-eng.pdf.Google Scholar
Guha-Sapir, D, Hargitt, D and Hoyois, P (2004) Thirty Years of Natural Disasters 1974–2003: The Numbers. Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Presses universitaires de Louvain.Google Scholar
Hilbe, JM (2012) Negative Binomial Regression, 2nd Edn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Horwich, G (2000) Economic lessons of the Kobe earthquake. Economic Development and Cultural Change 48, 521–542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Indo-Asian News Service (2008) Declare Bihar floods as national calamity: BJP. 27 August 2008. Available at https://www.indiatoday.in/latest-headlines/story/declare-bihar-floods-as-national-calamity-bjp-28941-2008-08-27.Google Scholar
Kahn, ME (2005) The death toll from natural disasters: the role of income, geography, and institutions. Review of Economics and Statistics 87, 271–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keefer, P, Neumayer, E and Plümper, T (2011) Earthquake propensity and the politics of mortality prevention. World Development 39, 1530–1541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kellenberg, DK and Mobarak, AM (2008) Does rising income increase or decrease damage risk from natural disasters? Journal of Urban Economics 63, 788–802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreft, S, Eckstein, D and Melchior, I (2017) Global Climate Risk Index 2017. Who Suffers Most From Extreme Weather Events? Weather-Related Loss Events in 2015 and 1996 to 2015. Germanwatch briefing paper. Bonn, Germany: Germanwatch e.V.Google Scholar
Neumayer, E, Plümper, T and Barthel, F (2014) The political economy of natural disaster damage. Global Environmental Change 24, 8–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickell, S (1981) Biases in dynamic models with fixed effects. Econometrica 49, 1417–1426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parida, Y, Dash, DP, Bhardwaj, P and Chowdhury, JR (2018) Effects of drought and flood on farmer suicides in Indian states: an empirical analysis. Economics of Disasters and Climate Change 2, 159–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plümper, T, Flores, AQ and Neumayer, E (2017) The double-edged sword of learning from disasters: mortality in the Tohoku tsunami. Global Environmental Change 44, 49–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raschky, PA (2008) Institutions and the losses from natural disasters. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 8, 627–634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravallion, M (2008) Evaluating anti-poverty programs. In Schultz, TP and Strauss, JA (eds), Handbook of Development Economics. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 3788–3846.Google Scholar
Schumacher, I and Strobl, E (2011) Economic development and losses due to natural disasters: the role of hazard exposure. Ecological Economics 72, 97–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sridharan, E (1999) Principles, power and coalition politics in India: lessons from theory, comparison and recent history. In Khanna, D and Kueck, G (eds), Principles, Power and Politics. New Delhi: Macmillan, pp. 270–290.Google Scholar
Stromberg, D (2007) Natural disasters, economic development, and humanitarian aid. The Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, 199–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szynkowska, M (2016) 2015 flood in Tamil Nadu, India disaster-induced displacement. In Gemenne, F, Zickgraf, C and Ionesco, D (eds), The State of Environmental Migration 2016: A Review of 2015. Liège, Belgium: Presses Universitaires de Liège, pp. 153–171.Google Scholar
Toya, H and Skidmore, M (2007) Economic development and the impacts of natural disasters. Economic Letters 94, 20–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tribune News Service (2001) National calamity or not? The Tribune, 29 January 2001. Available at https://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20010130/main5.htm.Google Scholar
Wooldridge, JM (2002) Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Wooldridge, JM (2013) Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach, 5th edn. Mason, OH: South-Western, Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
World Bank (2003) Financing Rapid Onset Natural Disaster Losses in India: A Risk Management Approach. Report No. 26844-IN. Washington, DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
World Bank (2012) Disaster Risk Management in South Asia: A Regional Overview. Washington, DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Parida supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Parida supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 369.4 KB