The regional economic impact of wildfires: Evidence from Southern Europe

Sarah Meier; Rob Elliott; Eric Strobl

doi:10.1016/j.jeem.2023.102787

The regional economic impact of wildfires: Evidence from Southern Europe

Sarah Meier^*, Rob Elliott, Eric Strobl

^*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

We estimate the impact of wildfires on the growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) and employment of regional economies in Southern Europe from 2011 to 2018. To this end we match Eurostat economic data with geospatial burned area perimeters based on satellite imagery for 233 Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) 3 level regions in Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece. Our panel fixed effects instrumental variable estimation results suggest an average contemporary decrease in a region's annual GDP growth rate of 0.11–0.18% conditional on having experienced at least one wildfire. For an average wildfire season this leads to a yearly production loss of 13–21 billion euros for Southern Europe. The impact on the employment growth rate is heterogeneous across economic activity types in that there is a decrease in the average annual employment growth rate for activities related to retail and tourism (e.g., transport, accommodation, food service activities) of 0.09–0.15%, offset by employment growth in insurance, real estate, administrative, and support service related activities of 0.13–0.22%.

Original language	English
Article number	102787
Number of pages	19
Journal	Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
Volume	118
Early online date	21 Jan 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2023.102787
Publication status	Published - Mar 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement Innovative Training Networks No. 860787. Any results, opinions and conclusions expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organisation.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s)

Keywords

Employment growth
GDP growth
Natural disasters
Wildfire

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

Access to Document

10.1016/j.jeem.2023.102787Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution (CC BY)

MeierS2023regionalFinal published version, 2.76 MBLicence: Creative Commons: Attribution (CC BY)

2 Citations
1 Comment/debate

Corrigendum to “The regional economic impact of wildfires: Evidence from Southern Europe” [Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 118 (2023) 102787]
Meier, S., Elliott, R. J. R. & Strobl, E., May 2023, In: Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 119, 1 p., 102823.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Comment/debate › peer-review

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PyroLife - training the next generation of integrated fire management experts
Kettridge, N.
European Commission
1/10/19 → 31/12/24
Project: EU

Cite this

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title = "The regional economic impact of wildfires: Evidence from Southern Europe",

abstract = "We estimate the impact of wildfires on the growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) and employment of regional economies in Southern Europe from 2011 to 2018. To this end we match Eurostat economic data with geospatial burned area perimeters based on satellite imagery for 233 Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) 3 level regions in Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece. Our panel fixed effects instrumental variable estimation results suggest an average contemporary decrease in a region's annual GDP growth rate of 0.11–0.18% conditional on having experienced at least one wildfire. For an average wildfire season this leads to a yearly production loss of 13–21 billion euros for Southern Europe. The impact on the employment growth rate is heterogeneous across economic activity types in that there is a decrease in the average annual employment growth rate for activities related to retail and tourism (e.g., transport, accommodation, food service activities) of 0.09–0.15%, offset by employment growth in insurance, real estate, administrative, and support service related activities of 0.13–0.22%.",

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The regional economic impact of wildfires: Evidence from Southern Europe

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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Research output

Corrigendum to “The regional economic impact of wildfires: Evidence from Southern Europe” [Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 118 (2023) 102787]

Projects

PyroLife - training the next generation of integrated fire management experts

Cite this