Publications

We estimate the impact of catastrophic wildfires on suicide. Leveraging an eight-year panel of county-by-month restricted-use mortality data for California, we find that catastrophic wildfires increase the average rate of suicide by 23% over the six-month aftermath of an event. Exploring sources of heterogeneity, we find that effects are largely driven by older, single men. Mechanisms are explored and suggest that both loss of property and direct loss of life play a role. Our findings are robust across alternative treatment definitions and model specifications, suggesting that natural disasters, and catastrophic wildfires in particular, are deadlier and more expensive than previously thought.

Millions of people are displaced by natural disasters each year, yet little is known about how evacuees affect host communities. We analyze the migratory effects of the most destructive fire in California history, the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed over 18,000 structures and displaced roughly 50,000 people. By merging geospatial information on the fire's footprint with Zillow's housing transaction data, we estimate both the spatial and temporal effects of the fire on real estate prices at a granular level. Within the fire's footprint, home prices increased by 25 percent in the six-week aftermath of the fire. Effects decay with distance and are statistically insignificant beyond 100 miles. Effects are detected within two weeks of the fire, fully materialize within four weeks, and persist up to ten months. Results are consistent with the observed migratory behavior of displaced people and are robust to a variety of specifications and modeling assumptions.

We discuss data quality and modeling issues inherent in the use of nationwide property data to value environmental amenities. By example of Zillow's Transaction and Assessment Database, a real estate database covering the United States, we identify challenges and propose guidance for identifying arm's-length sales; geolocating parcels and buildings; identifying temporal links between transaction, assessor, and parcel data; identifying property types, such as single-family homes and vacant lands; and dealing with missing or mismeasured data for standard housing attributes. We review current practice and show that how researchers address these issues can meaningfully influence research findings.

Bristol Bay in Alaska is home to the world's largest commercial salmon fishery. During an average fishing season, the population of the Bristol Bay region more than doubles as thousands of workers from out of state converge on the fishery. In the months leading up to the 2020 commercial fishery opening, as the COVID-19 pandemic exploded worldwide, great uncertainty existed about the health risks of opening the fishery. We administered an online survey to community members and fishery participants to understand how COVID-19 risk perceptions affected decisions to participate in the fishery. Risk perceptions vary across race and ethnic groups by residency and income. People with below median income who are members of minority groups, notably non-resident Hispanic workers and resident Alaska Native respondents, reported the highest risk perceptions related to COVID-19.

This paper examines the impact of two nationwide reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program on both flood insurance and property markets. The 2012 and 2014 reforms aimed to phase out subsidies on flood insurance premiums. Using a difference-in-differences framework comparing treated and similar but untreated properties, we find that the reforms led to a 14.3% relative increase in the price of flood insurance, an 8.2% decrease in insurance demand, a 4.2% decrease in property prices and a 2.3% decrease in property transaction volumes. As flood risk continues to accelerate across the United States, properly pricing insurance premiums can effectively discourage households from living in risky areas, but may involve trade-offs such as a large drop-off in insurance coverage.

This article investigates the influence of public risk mitigating activities on individuals' decisions to privately mitigate their disaster risks through changes in their risk perceptions. We exploit heterogeneity in measures under the U.S. Community Rating System to demonstrate that public investment in flood risk communication activities crowds in individuals' flood insurance demand, while activities that lower the flood hazard residents face crowd out individuals' flood insurance demand. We contribute to the discussion of the efficacy of disaster risk mitigation strategies and who ultimately bears the costs of natural disasters.

International trade in wildlife is one contributing factor to zoonotic disease risk. This paper shows that in recent decades the volume and pattern of internationally traded wildlife has changed considerably and, with it, the zoonotic pathogens that are traded. Combining zoonotic disease data with wildlife trade data from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, we show that making trade requirements more stringent leads to a decrease in the number of animals traded and, incidentally, also the number of zoonotic diseases that are traded.

The impact of flood events on flood risk perception has important implications for policy. Applying a novel dataset featuring the flooding extents from a severe event in Colorado, we disentangle inundated properties from "near misses," defined as structures not directly flooded but located inside the 100-year floodplain. Using a triple-difference hedonic framework, we show that inundated properties inside the floodplain underwent a decrease in price after the flood, while near misses saw a relative price increase. We speculate that inundated properties are perceived as being riskier and near misses relatively less risky, suggesting the possible influence of the availability heuristic or Bayesian learning.