The Economics of Disaster

"Hurricane Sandy was one of the worst natural disasters the east coast has ever seen.  Clean-up and recovery will take months, if not years and estimates run in the tens of billions of dollars.  Parts of New York and New Jersey will never be the same.  Entire seashore communities have been wiped out, but the determination to rebuild has been lauded as courageous and admirable. Yet as with all natural disasters, Sandy raises uncomfortable questions about the extent to which taxpayers should fund the cleanup and the extent to which government programs create moral hazards."