The Impact of Cyclones on Local Economic Growth: Evidence from Local Projections

We shed new light on the short-term dynamic effects of cyclones on local economic growth in India. We proxy local GDP growth with night-time light intensity data and construct a cyclone index that varies across months and districts depending on windspeed exposures. Using local projections on highly granular data for the period 1993M1-2011M12, we find that yearly estimations hide large short-term differential impacts and that the negative impact of cyclones is the largest between 4 and 8 months after the event.

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