People with disabilities are likely to experience difficulties overcoming the impact of natural disasters. Few scholars have focused on this population's ability to recover and handle stress following a natural disaster. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore and describe coping strategies and resilience factors that people with physical or mental disabilities used in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Resilience theory was used as the theoretical framework. Through face-to-face interviews, 10 persons with disabilities shared their experiences of coping and resilience. A lens of interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to identify emergent themes related to persons with disabilities' experiences of overcoming challenges and sustaining wellbeing in the aftermath of this natural disaster. According to study results, religion, recreation, and relaxation techniques were the main coping strategies used, and self-determination and independent skills were resilience factors that helped persons with disabilities remain positive and overcome challenges following the hurricane. Participants reported experiencing emotional reactions and identified the dislocation as the greatest stressor. The findings of this study have the potential to effect positive social change by informing stakeholders such as policymakers, community, and state agencies, and related professionals to help them recognize and address the health and psychological needs of persons with disabilities following a hurricane. Knowing which coping strategies and resilience factors persons with disabilities use to create awareness of the positive ways in which persons with disabilities manage the aftermath of this natural disaster.

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[pt] Este artigo estuda as respostas de emigração da população semiárida brasileira após choques de seca. Migração age como uma estratégia de mitigação em locais pobres e rurais, pois os choques climáticos exacerbam a disponibilidade limitada de crédito e liquidez. Para encontrar evidências desses mecanismos, calculamos as taxas de migração ao nível do município entre 1975 e 2010 usando dados oficiais do Censo. Os resultados mostram que as taxas de migração do semiárido aumentam após uma seca, especialmente nas décadas de 70 e 80. Além disso, investigamos se as respostas de mobilidade são menos pronunciadas nos municípios onde: (i) uma parcela maior de seus cidadãos é elegível para receber benefícios rurais de seguridade social, (ii) possui uma rede mais extensa de agências bancárias ou (iii) constrói mais projetos de infraestrutura que visam mitigar o impacto da seca. / [en] This article studies out-migration responses from Brazilian semiarid population following drought shocks. Migration acts as a coping strategy in poor and rural places as weather shocks exacerbate limited credit and liquidity availability. To find evidence of those mechanisms we compute migration rates at the municipality level starting in 1975 until 2010 using official Census data. Results show that migration rates from the semiarid rise following a drought, especially in the 70s and 80s. Furthermore, we investigate if mobility responses are less pronounced in municipalities where: (i) a larger share of its citizens is eligible to receive rural social security benefits, (ii) have an extended network of bank branches or (iii) built more drought mitigation infrastructure projects.

“The Pastoral Field: Local Ecologies in Early Modern Literature” excavates the ways in which pastoral literature registers the role nature-human interaction played in shaping protracted struggles over land use and ownership, and in the degradation and improvement of natural landscapes. Revising a longstanding critical tradition that understands early modern pastoral as primarily allegorical, the project instead insists that the form can also accommodate topical thinking about regional ecologies. Shifting the emphasis away from the Elizabethan court towards local agricultural politics, it unearths the ways in which natural crises such as flooding, famine, sheep rot, and soil degradation hastened processes of agricultural improvement and enclosure—and how those processes were in turn mediated, counter-factually imagined, and actively promoted within the literary devices of pastoral. Each of my four chapters locates pastoral plays, poems, romances, and country-house entertainments in the particular landscapes that shaped their development— landscapes that were, in turn, reconfigured by the literary and political concerns of Elizabethan authors.

School-age children are at high risk of experiencing traumatic and stressful events that can negatively impact their academic, emotional, and behavior performance (Brock et al., 2016). Any stressful situation (i.e., natural disaster) or adverse childhood experience (ACE) can potentially become a traumatic event for a child or adolescent. The current literature indicates that 60% of children experience at least one ACE, putting them at high risk for a variety of health and social problems (Manyema et al., 2018). Natural disasters adversely impact children's life as they have the potential to destroy physical structures and injure the child or family members. According to Inoue and colleagues (2018) natural disasters can additionally be considered as an ACE. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between PTSD symptoms of students who have experienced a natural disaster (e.g., hurricane exposure) and students’ internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Participants included 75 students from elementary, middle, and high school in a school district in the Southeastern United States. Linear regression showed that PTSD symptoms are significantly correlated with internalizing and externalizing behaviors. However, moderation and interaction effects showed that he type of hurricane exposure did not significantly moderate the relationship between PTSD symptoms and students' internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Implications from these results suggest that trauma-informed strategies are needed for students that are exposed to a traumatic event.

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This dissertation consists of three chapters exploring challenges that many developing countries face in augmenting state capacity and accumulating human capital. In particular, I focus on difficulties in developing state capacity and human capital induced by political violence, natural disasters, and over-reliance on income from foreign countries. The first chapter explores the effects of losing local politicians on the fiscal and personnel capacity of local governments using the outcome of the assassination attempts on mayors in Mexico. The second chapter investigates the effects of exposure to natural disasters on birth outcomes in Indonesia, using the Indian Ocean Tsunami as a natural experiment. In the final chapter, I use a cross-country analysis to study the link between reliance on remittances and the capacity of a country to collect taxes efficiently. The first chapter investigates the effects of losing mayors to successful assassinations on the capacity of local governments. By leveraging the randomness in the outcomes of assassination attempts against mayors in Mexico in 2002-21, I find that the loss of mayors negatively affects the fiscal and personnel capacities of the local governments. Municipal tax collection decreases by 29\%. The share of expenditure on primary services falls by 3 percentage points and is crowded out toward investment in construction. Municipal workers at productive stages in their careers leave the position. The back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that wages should increase by 13\% to retain them after assassinations. Organized criminal groups take advantage of the loss of mayors by increasing their presence in municipalities with successful assassinations. The results are not explained by non-political violence, levels of economic activities, or population changes. The results speak to the significance of leaders in maintaining fiscal capacity and retaining capable personnel in the workforce even in a violent environment. In the second chapter, co-authored with Elizabeth Kayoon Hur (Michigan State University), I evaluate the effect of in-utero exposure to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami on short-term childbirth outcomes in Indonesia. Exploiting variation in the timing of exposure, I find that the probability of successful pregnancies drops by 5.9 percentage points (pp), while miscarriages increase by 5.5 pp for those exposed in the earliest stage of pregnancy. I find suggestive evidence that post-disaster health investments by households may have shielded later cohorts from harmful effects. The results suggest the importance of considering fetal loss in developing countries and highlight that facilitating household investment in health through various policies may mitigate negative birth effects in the aftermath of natural disasters. The third chapter investigates the relationship between a country's reliance on remittances from abroad and its ability to collect taxes from various domestic sources. Despite the increasing flow of remittances in volume and proportion, particularly among developing countries, their role in determining the state's capacity to collect taxes has received little attention. This chapter explores the link between remittances and various tax revenue categories using country-level data. Two-way panel regressions suggest that a 1 percentage point (pp) increase in the inflow of remittances explains a 0.12 pp rise in consumption tax revenues. The same estimate derived from IV methods proxying for migrant network strength and openness of borders increases to 0.9 pp. Decomposing this result reveals that the increase in household consumption expenditure explains all of the statistical association, not the efficient tax-collecting mechanisms such as VAT. Subsample regressions by income category suggest that the association between remittances and consumption tax revenue is stronger in countries with lower income.

Numerous studies have examined the effect of natural disasters and social vulnerability indicators on broad factors using different theoretical frameworks; however, no study synthesizes a framework of theories to comprehensively examine the nexus among natural disasters, social vulnerability, subsidiarity principle, and government finance in the U.S. The dissertation utilizes a broad framework of theories to address two objectives of the dissertation namely the determinants of (1) infrastructure investment and (2) public assistance programs. Using panel data from 50 U.S states over a 17-time period (2000 – 2017), the first objective of the study investigates the determinants of infrastructure investment using a synthesis of theories. The study maintains that state infrastructure investment is not necessarily because of disaster punctuations but economic prosperity. The findings paint a picture of a proactive government that is perhaps prepared and does not act necessarily because of disaster events. The objective of the second study investigates the determinants of public assistance receipt assessed in 4 ways. The study maintains that subsidiarity assistance is influenced by both disasters and social vulnerabilities. However, disaggregating subsidiarity assistance into its sub-components (total public assistance, emergency work funds, permanent work funds, and intergovernmental transfers) provide a nuanced understanding of public assistance receipt. Federally declared disasters are strongly associated with disaster-relief forms of assistance, but not a significant determinant of intergovernmental transfers. Social vulnerability indicators, more especially – poverty, inequality (Gini), political influence, income, and infrastructure investment positively influence the receipt of federal intergovernmental transfers. The findings demonstrate that federal allocation of subsidiarity assistance follows a formula in terms of addressing wicked problems related to disasters and social vulnerabilities. In addition, the dissertation finds that disaster impact and social vulnerability theory additively explains the subsidiarity principle of U.S. federal government assistance programs to subnational governments. The dissertation contributes to theory, policy and management practices, and enlightens scholars and policymakers on the vital factors that stimulate state infrastructure investment and federal assistance receipt for best policy practice. Policymakers must constantly modify funding policies and effectively utilize tax-payer dollars following a formula to respond to jurisdictional vulnerabilities and public service needs

Rapporterade naturkatastrofer har ökat markant under senare år, likt totala kostnader som följer. Utländska direktinvesteringar har ökat parallellt och är en viktig variabel för återhämtning efter en katastrof, särskilt för utvecklingsländer. Naturkatastrofer utgör en risk för utländska direktinvesteringar varför syftet med uppsatsen är att analysera naturkatastrofers inverkan på inflödet av utländska direktinvesteringar. För att besvara uppsatsens syfte analyseras om direktinvesteringar i utvecklade och utvecklingsländer påverkas olika av naturkatastrofer samt hur olika typer av naturkatastrofer påverkar direktinvesteringar. Få publikationer finns att tillgå inom ämnet, varför uppsatsen fyller en kunskapslucka. Uppsatsen använder ett balanserat paneldataset med 1632 observationer över tidsperioden 1980 - 2011. Fixed Effect Model tillämpas och resultaten visar att naturkatastrofer har en negativ inverkan på inflödet av utländska direktinvesteringar på både kort och lång sikt. Effekten är mer negativ på lång sikt vilket stärker bilden av att direktinvesteringar är långsiktiga. Stormar är den typ av naturkatastrof, framför översvämningar, som är tydligast bunden till direktinvesteringar. Jordbävningar visar ingen signifikans. Naturkatastrofer påverkar utländska direktinvesteringar i utvecklade länder marginellt mer än i utvecklingsländer. Den ekonomiska tillväxten är enbart signifikant för utvecklingsländer som uppvisar en positiv signifikant för alla studerade tidshorisonter. För utvecklade och utvecklingsländer har stormar och översvämningar ett negativ samband med direktinvesteringar. Jordbävningar uppvisar en positiv signifikans på 1 års sikt för utvecklade länder, men ingen signifikans för utvecklingsländer.Nyckelord: Utländska / The reporting of natural disasters has increased significantly during the last century. Likewise has the financial costs risen along with the natural disasters. Foreign direct investments (FDI) has increased during the same time period and is a key variable for economic recovery after a natural disaster, especially for developing countries. Natural disasters imposes risk for FDI, hence the purpose of this study is to analyze the impact natural disasters has on FDI. This study investigate if there are differences in how developed and developing countries cope with natural disasters and how different types of natural disasters affects FDI in different ways. The study uses a 1632 observation panel data set covering the time period 1980 to 2011. The regression model applied is Fixed Effect Model. The results show that natural disasters significantly impact FDI negatively, both in the short and long-run. The marginal effect in the long-run are shown to be more negative than in the short-run, establishing that FDI are long term investments. The type of natural disaster, closest connected to FDI are storms. The impact from natural disaster on developed countries is marginally more notable than the impact on developing countries. Economic Growth, as a regressor, is only shown to be significant for developing countries. For developed and developing countries storms and floods are negatively connected to FDI. In developed countries earthquakes have a positive connection to FDI in a one year period.