Abstract

Natural disasters often pose sudden and drastic organizational environmental shocks for local governments, leading to administrative disruptions and public finance risks. In the short term, disasters may disrupt debt financing. The disaster shocks may increase the costs of debt if they hurt revenue bases or decrease the costs of debt if generating “constructive destruction” to the local economy. Using a panel of U.S. County governments between 1999 and 2019, we find that weather-related disasters decrease the likelihood of issuing general obligation bonds and increase the probability of issuing revenue bonds and short-term bonds in the subsequent 6 months. Conditional on borrowing, disasters increase the bond yields for short-term bonds. Thus, natural disasters may disrupt the timing of local government long-term borrowing but do not necessarily destroy public finances.

摘要

自然灾害常常会给地方政府带来突然而剧烈的组织环境冲击，导​​致行政混乱和公共财政风险。短期内，灾害可能会扰乱债务融资。如果灾害冲击损害了收入基础，则可能会增加债务成本；如果对当地经济产生“建设性破坏”，则可能会降低债务成本。通过使用 1999 年至 2019 年期间的美国县政府小组，我们发现与天气相关的灾害会降低发行一般义务债券的可能性，并增加在随后 6 个月内发行收益债券和短期债券的可能性。以借款为条件，灾难会提高短期债券的收益率。因此，