Development as disaster insurance

Matthew Kahn's new paper, via MR:

While richer nations do not experience fewer natural disaster events than poorer nations, richer nations do suffer less death from disaster. Economic development provides implicit insurance against nature’s shocks. Democracies and nations with higher quality institutions suffer less death from natural disaster.

This is intuitive to many, such as the MR reader who asked, "Which earthquake killed more people today?", FP Passport in its initial assessment of the Chilean earthquake, and the NYT's David Brooks in a prescient January column:

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died. [Note: latest estimates are up to 300,000, or 3% of Haiti's population]

Now, if only we knew more about what works in development...

Update: "Less death from natural disaster" should not be confused with lack of devastation:

Photos from Boston.com, via Ben Casnocha who describes his firsthand experience of the temblor.

Haiti and agriculture

Michael Roberts points out that one, U.S. import quotas support a domestic price well above the world price (see below), and two, the Dominican Republic's U.S. sugar import quota is twenty times that of Haiti.

I remember first reading about the stark gap (economic, political, and environmental) between the Dominican Republic and Haiti in Jared Diamond's Collapse; there are obviously a host of causes that go far beyond U.S. policy. Here is a satellite photo of the Haiti-DR border; note the severe deforestation on the Haitian (left) side.

Tyler Cowen suggests that the Haitian quota be repealed in the light of Haiti's recent tragedy. I agree with Michael that the impact now is likely small - what would have really mattered would have been lifting the quota fifty years ago.

In other Haiti news, Roger Thurow laments that the agricultural component of Haiti's recovery aid is being largely ignored

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says its part of the appeal - $23 million to help revive Haiti’s food production – is being largely ignored. Only 8% has been funded.

Hopefully the recent return to prominence of agriculture on the broader aid scene will facilitate this being remedied by the time the Haitian growing season starts in March,