TY  - JOUR
AU  - Landon-Lane,John
AU  - Rockoff,Hugh
AU  - Steckel,Richard H.
TI  - Droughts, Floods and Financial Distress in the United States
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15596
PY  - 2009
Y2  - December 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15596
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15596.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John Landon-Lane
Department of Economics
75 Hamilton Street
Rutgers University
College Avenue Campus
New Brunswick, NJ  08901-1248
E-Mail: lane@econ.rutgers.edu

Hugh Rockoff
Department of Economics
75 Hamilton Street
Rutgers University
College Avenue Campus
New Brunswick, NJ  08901-1248
Tel: 609/897-0117
Fax: 732/932-7416
E-Mail: rockoff@fas-econ.rutgers.edu

Richard H. Steckel
Department of Economics
Ohio State University
410 Arps Hall, 1945 North High Street
Columbus, OH  43210-1172
Tel: 614/292-5008
Fax: 614/292-3906
E-Mail: steckel.1@osu.edu
M1  - published as John Landon-Lane, Hugh Rockoff, Richard H. Steckel. "Droughts, Floods and Financial Distress in the United States," in Gary D. Libecap and Richard H. Steckel, editors, "The Economics of Climate Change: Adaptations Past and Present" University of Chicago Press (2011)

M3  - presented at "Climate Change:  Past and  Present Conference", May 30-31, 2009
AB  - The relationships among the weather, agricultural markets, and financial markets have long been of interest to economic historians, but relatively little empirical work has been done. We push this literature forward by using modern drought indexes, which are available in detail over a wide area and for long periods of time to perform a battery of tests on the relationship between these indexes and sensitive indicators of financial stress.  The drought indexes were devised by climate historians from instrument records and tree rings, and because they are unfamiliar to most economic historians and economists, we briefly describe the methodology.  The financial literature in the area can be traced to William Stanley Jevons, who connected his sun spot theory to rainfall patterns.  The Dust bowl of the 1930s brought the climate-finance link to the attention of the general public.  Here we assemble new evidence to test various hypotheses involving the impact of extreme swings in moisture on financial stress.
ER  -