Università della Svizzera italiana

Natural disasters and electoral outcomes

Masiero, Giuliano ; Santarossa, Michael

In: European Journal of Political Economy, 2021, vol. 67, p. 19 p

Natural disasters are good examples of catastrophic events that may affect vote decisions. In this study, we analyze how the occurrence of earthquakes changes voters' behavior at municipal elections and which channels drive this change, focusing in particular on the role of media exposure. We exploit data from 13,338 municipal electoral cycles where incumbents seek reelection between 1993 and...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Earthquakes, grants and public expenditure : how municipalities respond to natural disasters

Masiero, Giuliano ; Santarossa, Michael

In: Journal of regional science, 2020, vol. 60, no. 3, p. 481-516

We analyze the response of municipalities to the occurrence of natural disasters in terms of spending behavior, use of upper tier transfers and recovery, using balance sheet data of about 8000 Italian municipalities for the period 2000-2015 and the universe of earthquakes events. We find evidence of increasing expenditure for about 12 years after the shocks, with asymmetric responses between...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Earthquakes, grants and public expenditure : how municipalities respond to natural disasters

Masiero, Giuliano ; Santarossa, Michael

We analyze the response of municipalities to the occurrence of natural disasters (earthquakes) in Italy, in terms of spending behavior, use of upper tier transfers and recovery. We find evidence of increasing expenditure for about 12 years after the shock, with asymmetric responses between matching (earthquake-related) and unconditional grants, and heterogeneous flypaper effects across the...