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Title: A trend analysis of normalized insured damage from natural disasters
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2010
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Abstract: As the world becomes wealthier over time, inflation-adjusted insured damages fromnatural disasters go up as well. This article analyzes whether there is still a significantupward trend once insured natural disaster loss has been normalized. By scaling uploss from past disasters, normalization adjusts for the fact that a disaster of equalstrength will typically cause more damage nowadays than in past years because ofwealth accumulation over time. A trend analysis of normalized insured damage fromnatural disasters is not only of interest to the insurance industry, but can potentially beuseful for attempts at detecting whether there has been an increase in the frequencyand/or intensity of natural hazards, whether caused by natural climate variability oranthropogenic climate change. We analyze trends at the global level over the period1990 to 2008, over the period 1980 to 2008 for Germany and 1973 to 2008 for theUnited States. We find no significant trends at the global level, but we detectstatistically significant upward trends in normalized insured losses from all nongeophysicaldisasters as well as from certain specific disaster types in the UnitedStates and Germany.
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Authors: Neumayer, Eric; Barthel, Fabian
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Institution: The Munich Re Programme: Evaluating the Economics
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Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Other
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