The study described here examines the short- and long-term economic, and financial impacts of natural disasters. It relies in part, on in-depth case studies of overall sensitivity to natural hazards in the small island economy of Dominica; public finance consequences of disasters in Bangladesh;...

Two worldwide trends in recent decades are commonly noted and sometimes linked in discussing disasters. First, the reported global cost of natural disasters has risen significantly, with a 14-fold increase between the 1950s and 1990s ( Munich Re, 1999 ). During the 1990s, major natural...

The frequency of dramatic natural shocks around the world is a reminder that governments and the international community need to do more to prevent and mitigate the human misery and economic costs that result from such calamities. Natural disaster risk management is a multi-sectoral endeavor to...

This paper makes the case for why safety nets are an important tool for managing the risk of natural hazards. The use of safety nets is advocated both ex ante, to prevent and mitigate the impact of natural disaster and ex post, to cope with the impacts of natural shocks. Firstly, the paper...