cover image: Corruption Kills: Global Evidence from Natural Disasters

Corruption Kills: Global Evidence from Natural Disasters

27 Oct 2023

Natural disasters are inevitable, but humanitarian and economic losses are determined largely by policy preferences and institutional underpinnings that shape the quality of public infrastructure (including emergency responses and healthcare services) and govern business practices and the adherence to building codes. In this paper, we empirically investigate whether corruption increases the loss of human lives caused by natural disasters, using a large panel of 135 countries during the period 1980–2020. The econometric analysis provides convincing evidence that corruption increases the number of disaster-related deaths, after controlling for economic, demographic, healthcare and institutional factors. That is, the higher the level of corruption in a given country, the greater the number of fatalities as a share of population due to natural disasters. Our results show that the devastating impact of corruption on loss of human lives caused by natural disasters is significantly greater in developing countries, which are even more vulnerable to nonlinear effects of corruption.
financial crises economic sectors

Authors

Serhan Cevik, João Tovar Jalles

Related Organizations

Format
Paper
Frequency
regular
ISBN
9798400257315
ISSN
1018-5941
Pages
15
Published in
United States of America
Series
Working Paper No. 2023/220
StockNumber
WPIEA2023220

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