Rainy Days on Mondays: Storm Proxies, Human Actions and Disaster Outcomes in the Caribbean

Abstract

Are disaster outcomes the sole function of the weather, or do human actions play a role? Many assume that human dynamics matter, but this has not been tested. We utilize the exogenous nature of storm hazards and knowledge of pre-event preparedness by day-of-week to test if there is a connection between human actions and disaster outcomes, using Caribbean country-level data. We find that heavy rainfall events on Mondays robustly affect more people compared to events on other days of the week. Although less robust, we also see evidence in independent macroeconomic datasets of the same human-disaster interactions.

Keywords: natural hazards, human-disaster interaction, disaster preparedness

JEL Classification: Q01, Q54, Q59