This paper examines the role of insurance in mitigating the adverse macroeconomic effects of climate-related catastrophes. We first develop a stylised theoretical growth model which incorporates a role for natural catastrophes, climate change and insurance. This illustrates how insurance can...

Disasters have posed significant economic costs to Bangladesh, and financing needs associated with disaster response are estimated to be substantial. Bangladesh has put in place fiscal mechanisms, social protection programs, and financial instruments to respond to natural disasters. While the...

As climate change intensifies, flood events are becoming more frequent and more destructive across Europe. In Germany, catastrophic floods in 2021 caused over EUR 40 billion in damages, prompting a large-scale government aid response. At the same time, only about 50 percent of residential...

This disaster risk finance (DFR) diagnostic was prepared by the World Bank Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice in response to a request from the Government of Zimbabwe (GoZ) for a study to assess the institutional, legal, and financial planning for financing of disaster risk...

This study examines the geographical spillover of the state-level average homeowners insurance cost for 48 US contiguous states. We estimate a panel spatial Durbin model with state and year fixed effect for data between 2001 and 2018. We found a significant positive spillover of average...

Background: Despite the apparent importance of global catastrophe risks (GCRs), human society has invested relatively little to reduce them. One possible reason is that we do not understand the significance of reducing GCRs, especially when measured in the monetary terms that we typically use to...

As climate disasters intensify, their financial shockwaves increasingly threaten residential stability and the resilience of the U.S. mortgage market. While prior research links natural disasters to payment delinquency, far less is known about foreclosure-the terminal outcome of housing...

This diagnostic report was prepared in response to a technical assistance request from the Government of the Republic of Namibia (GRN) to support the design and implementation of an index-based agriculture insurance program targeting small-scale farmers. Based on initial consultations with the...

By leveraging randomly timed exposure to local cyclones as natural experiments, this study pioneers a comprehensive causal analysis of cyclone impacts on residential outcomes among Australian individuals. Drawing upon over two decades of nationally representative longitudinal data from the...

Amidst growing concerns over heightened natural disaster risks, this study pioneers an inquiry into the causal impacts of cyclones on the demand for private health insurance (PHI) in Australia. We amalgamate a nationally representative longitudinal dataset with historical cyclone records,...

This paper proposes a possible EU-level solution to address the widening gap in natural catastrophe insurance protection in Europe. Increased economic exposure and the growing frequency and severity of natural catastrophes linked to climate change have been driving up the cost of natural...

This study examines natural disasters' short-run and long-run effects on economic growth. We analysed insurance's short-run and long-run role in the natural disaster-economic growth nexus using 48 African countries from 2000 to 2020. Using a two-step system GMM, the study revealed that natural...

The frequency and economic damage of natural disasters have increased globally over the last two decades due to climate change. This increase has an impact on the disaster insurance field, particularly in the calculation of premiums. Many regions have a shortcoming in employing insurance because...

Rainfall is an important source of covariate shock in developing countries. Insurance against a rainfall index has, therefore, held much promise as a formal insurance product to protect the livelihoods of poor farmers. But how good is rainfall as a measure of covariate shocks? The imperfect...

Using unique nationwide property-level mortgage, flood risk, and flood map data, we analyze whether lenders respond to flood risk that is not captured in FEMA flood maps. We find that lenders are less willing to originate mortgages and charge higher rates for lower LTV loans that face...

We present a theory of the demand for flood insurance and empirically analyze the effects of the adoption of Risk Rating 2.0, using individual insurance histories for all NFIP policies. The reform increased exit and reduced entry, both in the flood zone and its periphery. The reform had highly...

The objective of this feasibility study is to identify disaster risk finance and insurance (DRFI) solutions for up to 1.9 million family farmers in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. This study is motivated by an emerging consensus on the need to design and implement large-scale DRFI...

This study explores how the System Dynamics modeling approach can help deal with the problem of conventional insurance mechanisms by studying the feedback loops governing complex systems connected to the disaster insurance mechanism. Instead of addressing the disaster's underlying risk, the...

Many studies have investigated flood risk and insurance coverage in the 100-year flood zone, but much less is known about the periphery of the flood zone. We present a new approach to estimate flood risk and insurance take-up in the vicinity of the flood zone based on building-level inundation...