The Social Value of Hurricane Forecasts

We thank Diego Cardoso, Luc Esprabens, Mike Huang, Steven Koller, Brian McNoldy, and Juan Carlos Villaseñor-Derbez for excellent research assistance and comments. We are also grateful for the guidance and support provided by Andrea Schumacher and Frank DeMaria at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University, as well as the staff at the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program and the Weather Program Office at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, especially to Gina Eosco, Frank Marks, and Shirley Murillo. This manuscript benefited from discussions by Jackson Dorsey, Manuel Linsenmeier, and Je↵ Shrader, and comments from Christopher Costello, Gabriel Lade, Derek Lemoine, Cynthia Lin-Lawell, Antony Millner, Christopher Parmeter, Christopher Timmins, and Jinhua Zhao, as well as from feedback by seminar participants at Arizona State University, the University of Alaska Anchorage, Cornell University, St. John’s University, Marquette University, the University of Miami, the University of California San Diego, the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, the CESifo Area Conference on Energy and Climate Economics, the Colorado Environmental Economics Workshop, the Kansas City Fed, the Northeast Environmental Workshop, the Occasional Workshop, the Seminar Series of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the AERE Summer Conference. Funding for this project was provided by Grant NA20OAR4320472 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The views expressed in this work do not represent the views of the federal government, nor of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• June 3, 2024