大西洋飓风对商业活动的影响（英）

Policy Research Working Paper11217The Impact of Atlantic Hurricanes on Business ActivitySumit AgarwalSmarajit Paul ChoudhuryMingxuan FanLeora KlapperDevelopment Economics Development Research GroupSeptember 2025 Public Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedProduced by the Research Support TeamAbstractThe Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.Policy Research Working Paper 11217This paper quantifies the short-run economic impact of 21 Atlantic hurricanes on U.S. local business activity from 2017 to 2024 using anonymized Mastercard transaction data aggregated by ZIP code. On average, hurricanes reduce merchant sales by 12.4 percent during the prepara-tion, impact, and recovery phases—an estimated US$1.38 billion in lost revenue per storm. Substitution in spending across nearby areas or large online platforms is limited, indi-cating widespread local consumption declines. Economic disruption varies more by industry than storm intensity, with independent stores hit harder than chains. Local busi-nesses with larger online presence face smaller, shorter sales declines, showing greater resilience.This paper is a product of the Development Research Group, Development Economics. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contacted at lklapper@worldbank.org. The Impact of Atlantic Hurricanes on Business Activity By SUMIT AGARWAL, SMARAJIT PAUL CHOUDHURY,MINGXUAN FAN, AND LEORA KLAPPER∗ JEL: G20, G50, D22, O31, Q54 Keywords: Digital payments, Extreme weather, Consumer spending, Small- and medium-sized enterprises ∗Agarwal, National University of Singapore, bizagarw@nus.edu.sg; Choudhury, Mastercard Economics Institute, smarajit.PaulChoudhury@mastercard.com; Fan, National University of Singapore, mingxuan.fan@nus.edu.sg: Klapper, Corresponding author, World Bank, lklapper@worldbank.org. We are grateful to the Mastercard Economics Institute for providing controlled access to data based on aggregated and anonymized transaction data as well as technical support. We thank Joel Alcedo, Ethan Harris, Adrienne Manns, and Michelle Meyer for