The Economics Of Hurricanes

William D. Nordhaus, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, offers an interesting academic review of the economic impacts of hurricanes and suggestions on how we might think about them:

"There has been no major long-term change in the number or intensity of hurricanes worldwide. However, there has been a significant increase in hurricane intensity in the North Atlantic over the last decade. Only a small fraction of storms make landfall in the U.S., and 2005 was a record year by a wide margin in terms of the total power of hurricanes making landfall over the 1851-2005 historical record. In other words, 2005 was a big outlier in terms of hurricane experience.

...the experience of 2005 appears to have been a quadruple outlier of nature. The number of North Atlantic storms is on the upside of a long-term cycle; the fraction of intense storms in 2005 was above average; the fraction of the intense storms making landfall in the United States was unusually high; and one of the intense storms hit what is the most vulnerable high-value region in the country. New Orleans is to the gods of natural destruction what the World Trade Towers were to the gods of human destruction."

Thanks to Ashwani Vasishth