The impact of hydrogeological events on firms: Evidence from Italy

Abstract

Using a novel dataset of natural disasters affecting Italy from 2010 onward, we investigate the impact of hundreds of hydrogeological events on firms’ survival and performance. Despite being less extreme, these events are increasingly frequent and geographically widespread, this constituting a relevant but unexplored topic in the natural disasters literature. In order to assess the impact of multiple events occurred over several years, we implement a staggered difference-in-differences design that exploits the variation in the timing of the treatment. Our results show that hit firms have a 7.3% higher probability of exiting the market. Conditional on surviving, in the three years after the calamity, firms experience an average decline in their revenues and employment by −4.9% and −2.2%, respectively. These impacts are highest for micro-small, younger and low-tech firms.