The Impact Of Natural Disasters On Economic Growth Based On Panel Data Model

In recent years, extreme natural disasters have become more and more frequent. Parts of natural disasters have not only caused great inconvenience to people, but also brought serious economic loss to the society. Frequent extreme natural disasters have raised many concerns in the effects of natural disasters on economic growth. Whether natural disasters promote or hinder economic growth? It’s always difficult to get consistent results. Based on Solow model of economic growth, this paper takes China and OECD countries as examples to assess the impact and channel of natural disasters on economic growth.This paper selected data from31Chinese provinces between2000and2010and17OECD countries to examine the impact of natural disasters on economic growth with panel data regression and Granger causality test. The results show that in China, meteorological disasters may promote economic growth through the accumulation of physical capital while there is no significant relationship between geological disasters and economic growth. At the same time in OECD countries, meteorological disasters may promote economic growth both through the accumulation of physical and human capital, while geological disasters just increase the physical capital accumulation.The empirical results show that due to reasons such as the different economic growth mode, Chinese governments and sectors of society will quickly invest a mass of physical capital, ignoring the human capital investment. While in OECD countries, governments, enterprises and individuals will pay more attention to investment, consumption and accumulation of human capital. Assessing the impacts of different natural disasters on economic growth has good theoretical and practical significance, which can offer reference for building long-term, effective and systematic mechanism of emergency management and making prevention and mitigation policies.