Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/260840 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 9710
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
Allocation decisions are vulnerable to political influence, but it is unclear in which situations politicians use their discretionary power in a partisan manner. We analyze the allocation of presidential disaster declarations in the United States, exploiting the spatiotemporal randomness of hurricane strikes from 1965–2018 along with changes in political alignment. We show that decisions are not biased when disasters are unambiguously strong or weak. Only in ambiguous situations, after medium-intensity hurricanes, do areas governed by presidents’ co-partisans receive up to twice as many declarations. This political bias explains 10 percent of total relief spending, totaling USD 450 million per year.
Subjects: 
disaster relief
distributive politics
hurricanes
natural disasters
nonlinearity
party alignment
political favouritism
political economy
situational ambiguity
JEL: 
D72
H30
H84
P16
Q54
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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