The Effect of Superstorm Sandy on the Macroeconomy

M. Henry Linder, Richard Peach () and Sarah Stein

No 20130422, Liberty Street Economics from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Abstract: The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce has reported that real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased at a very sluggish 0.4 percent annual rate in the final quarter of 2012. A natural question to ask is to what extent, if any, did superstorm Sandy contribute to this weak performance. While not a particularly intense storm, it was the largest Atlantic storm on record with a diameter of roughly 1,100 miles. The storm severely disrupted economic activity from late October until well into November along the eastern seaboard from the Mid-Atlantic region into New England, an area that is densely populated and that represents a significant portion of total economic activity of the entire country. Nonetheless, we suggest that superstorm Sandy likely had a relatively modest impact on the fourth-quarter growth rate, and that we cannot even be certain of the sign of that impact.

Keywords: measurement of macroeconomic impacts; hurricanes; superstorm sandy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E2 N2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-04-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
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