PEPP Special Seminar (March 19 2026) – Prof. John Gibson
2026/03/03
2026/3/19 (Thur.)
Speaker: Prof. John Gibson (University of Waikato, NZ)
Chair: Prof. Vuong Nguyen
Time: 16:45~18:15
Title: Flooded Cities Redux
Format: Onsite 3K311
Abstract: Major floods affect millions each year. High-profile, widely cited economic impact estimates that use nighttime lights data (Kocornik-Mina et al., 2020) rely on coarse imagery that induces spatially mean-reverting measurement error, attenuating econometric estimates of short-run losses. We revisit these estimates for over 700 cities exposed to major floods during 2013–19, leveraging a benchmark of fine-resolution lights against degraded lights that replicate the earlier data structure. The finer data indicate that luminosity falls by more than eight percent in the year of a major flood—almost double what is seen with coarse lights for the same cities and years. Replacing the original lights data with deblurred reconstructions trained on the modern sensor again shows substantially larger losses than those previously reported. Finally, an apparent post-flood “overshoot” in lights in low-elevation areas that suggested a lack of adaptation arises only with the coarse imagery. Thus, floods are more costly but adaptation may be greater than previously reported.
JEL Codes: Q54, R11
Keywords: Adaptation, DMSP, floods, mean-reverting measurement error, VIIRS
John Gibson | Mō | About | University of Waikato
