Storm economics

Harvey has finally made his exit from Houston and the Gulf Coast.  In his wake, a number of economic questions come up.  There always is the issue of price gouging after a natural disaster.  Although the practice raises ethical challenges, it also is a natural consequence of a price system that beats the heck out of what Venezuela uses to allocate resources.

Tyler Cowan has a Bloomberg column on economic issues related to storms that is worth a quick read.  A few key takeaways:

• Storms hurt economic growth because they force us to allocate resources away from other goods and toward rebuilding.  They also fracture lives and incomes.  
• Economic research shows that we are resilient; most who lose their jobs and homes do recover.  
• The standard economic approach to federal flood insurance is problematic.  Under the current system, we subsidize risky housing investments near oceans and in flood plains.  Bailouts to those without insurance reduce the odds that people will insure in the future.  

Even if you really believe that consumers are always rational and well informed, no one could have possibly seen 50 inches of rain in a few days as a possibility.  So what do you do with those who lack flood insurance?  Getting the federal government out of the flood insurance business is a question worthy of serious debate.  But for now Ted Cruz is going to be very supportive of a federal bailout.