This study tests alternative hypotheses concerning the motivations behind the participation by rural households in community work. Using unique data from natural and field experiments in southern Sri Lanka, where irrigated fields have been allocated to farmers by government lottery, we compare...

Social capital is thought to have both positive and negative aspects. This paper examines how social capital has worked in the process of recovery and reconstruction in Kobe since the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake. The paper focuses on the tertiary sector of Kobe because since the earthquake...

The human consequences of the 3.11 tsunami were not distributed equally across the municipalities of the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan. Instead, the mortality rate from the massive waves varied tremendously from zero to ten percent of the local residential population. What accounts for...

Previous research shows no consensus as to whether and how natural disasters affect suicide rates in their aftermath. Using prefecture-level panel data of natural disasters and suicide in Japan between 1982 and 2010, we estimate both contemporaneous and lagged effects of natural disasters on the...