自然灾害除给人类带来的精神、物质上的打击之外，还带来新的机会和机遇。通常，对灾害的评估多由地质科学研究人员、专家、土木工程师、建筑师实施，却少有各类经济学者和业内各类企业家参与。评估的方式各有不同。一派认为，灾害成本=灾害损毁资源重建投入；另一派则将灾害造成的直接和间接的损失均考虑在内。人类历史上多次出现的重大自然灾害均有来自不同国度的学者做了相应的分析研究。摘录某国学者对1755年里斯本大地震分析论文如下，供参考。

The Opportunity of a Disaster:

The Economic Impact of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake

1. Introduction

“Sometimes miracles are necessary, natural phenomena, or great disasters in order to shake, to awaken, and to open the eyes of misled nations about their interests, [nations] oppressed by others that simulate friendship, and reciprocal interest. Portugal needed the earthquake to open her eyes, and to little by little escape from slavery and total ruin1.”

 

2. The Direct Effects

This section estimates the direct effects of the earthquake. New estimates of casualties are presented and the impact of GDP is assessed through a decomposition of the main damages of the disaster. In addition, the earthquake’s impact on prices is analyzed at the regional level, and new data on builders’ wages are presented.

 

2.1. Impact on Population

2.2. Impact on GDP

 

The direct damage of the 1755 earthquake is estimated between 32 and 48 percent of Portuguese GDP, a considerable amount that reflects the opulence and the riches of eighteenth century Lisbon, giving credence to the idea that the losses of the disaster were very substantial, although not as catastrophic as many contemporary reports and existing estimates indicate。

2.3. Prices

One of the most important short-term impacts of the 1755 earthquake concerned the dramatic changes in absolute and relative prices, both at the national and regional level. In general, the changes in prices were only transitory, but substantial volatility remained for some time. This is especially true for some of the main staples, like wheat, in the most affected regions, such as Lisbon and the Algarve.

 

2.4. Wages

The earthquake also had a significant, albeit temporary, effect on wages, increasing the wage premium to construction workers. In the early days after the disaster, several accounts report an acute shortage of stonemasons and, especially, carpenters. The letters of the Pope representative in Lisbon suggest that for several months there was a dire need for carpenters, and it was difficult to find someone willing or able to work even to build a hut for the royal family to live. Thus, wages rose sharply in the immediate days after the disaster.

3. Indirect Effects and Long-Term Impact

Although economic theory tends to characterize natural disasters as mere exogenous shocks that temporarily disrupt an economy, recent studies have shown that natural hazards can have long-term effects on economic performance. For instance, Skidmore and Toya (2002) use a sample of 89 countries for the 1960-90 period and find that impact of natural hazards on economic growth varies by type of disaster. They argue that climate-related disasters tend to have a positive effect on growth, whereas geologic disasters have either a negative or insignificant impact. In turn, Odell and Weidenmier (2004) argue that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake had a substantial impact on financial markets, contributing to permanent changes in the institutional structure of the United States. In similar fashion, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake also had a considerable long-term impact, which significantly affected the long-run performance of the Portuguese economy.

It is more or less consensual that the earthquake had a long-lasting effect politically, due to the rise of influence and power of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, better known as the Marquis of Pombal, who became the dominating figure in Portuguese politics until the death of the king, D. José I, in 1777. The mythology surrounding Pombal portrays him as an enlightened dictator that rescued Portugal from the asphyxiating influence of the triad of the Church (including the Inquisition), a rent-seeking nobility, and the economic dependency from Britain. In reality, Pombal is controversial figure, who defies any kind of simplistic characterization42. The earthquake was the defining moment in Pombal’s political life, during which he was able to show his organizing and leading abilities. It is very likely that without the prestige and political capital gathered during the recovery and relief efforts, Pombal would have not had the political support necessary for many of the reforms he undertook during the 27 years of his reign.

 

Namely, without the reputation and status obtained in the disaster, it would have been virtually impossible for him persecute to the Jesuits and to reduce the shadowing influence of the Church. In the same way, Pombal’s centralization of the State would have faced a lot more opposition, and his nationalistic commercial and industrial import-substituting policies would have been virtually impossible. Under the strong hand of Pombal, the state was reorganized into an active and reformist administration, which tried to centralize economic operations in order to improve the control of the State in the economy. In order to understand the prestige and power gathered by Pombal, we need to analyze the prompt response in the aftermath of the 1755 disaster. This section reviews the main impact of the earthquake on the policy-making process in Portugal as well as its long-term legacy.

 

3.1 The Immediate Response and Reconstruction

An unprecedented disaster in Western Europe demanded an unparalleled response. The latter included several vigorous and strict measures not only to maintain public order and to avoid the looting of many of the public treasures and private goods, but also to avoid plague, disease and starvation. The most impressive feature of the response to the disaster was the speed and the degree of centralization that was attained43. From the outset of the relief effort, Pombal assumed a prominent position in the immediate response to the disaster. Of the three secretaries of state in the government, Carvalho e Melo (later better known as Pombal) was the only able or willing to face the dimension of the tragedy. Seizing the opportunity provided by the earthquake, Pombal coordinated and organized the relief effort from his carriage traveling around the devastated capital.44 The main features of the recovery and relief efforts were summarized and celebrated in a luxurious book published in 1758 by Amador Patricio de

.

. The most important immediate policy measures include: i) Prevent pestilence (emphasizing the urgency to dispose of the corpses), ii) Avoid hunger and starvation (policies that included the elimination of duties on foodstuffs, the distribution of food to the homeless and the destitute, and price controls), iii) to cure the ill and injured (e.g. establishment of temporary hospitals), iv) repopulation of the city, v) prevent stealing and punish robbers, vi) to avoid stolen goods to leave by the sea or river, vii) to remedy the needs of the Algarve region and Setúbal, viii) bring troops to the capital to help the recovery effort and reconstruction, ix) to reestablish public goods in order to help inhabitants of the city (water sanitary measures, removal of debris, and rent controls for homes, shops and storage buildings, x) to reestablish religious cult in the remaining churches, xi) to collect and reunite homeless nuns in Lisbon, and the Algarve, xii) religious acts to diminish the Wrath of God and to thank God many graces, xiii) to relieve the people from several necessities, xiv) to arrange the means to rebuild the city (orders to measure and assess all streets, buildings, houses, and public buildings in the ruined parishes, including demotion, grade assessment, and leveling of several parts of the city center. The alignment of the new streets was proclaimed on June 12 and July 12, 1758 and the reconstruction plan was approved on June 16, 1758). In Lisbon, the reconstruction efforts focused mainly in the city center. Before 1755, Lisbon resembled a medieval town with small and disorganized streets. Since the city centre was almost completely destroyed by the earthquake, Pombal and several military architects regarded this as an opportunity to redesign the city and to transform it into a modern metropolis, which was also less prone to earthquake damage. All temporary rebuilding was forbidden until all the debris was cleared from the land and until the plans for rebuilding were finished. In addition, to increase the speed of the reconstruction, pre-fabrication was promoted, and there were incentives to standardize the quality of work materials and the Lisboa, which was clearly sponsored by the government4546

 

. A new construction technique (the gaiola) was introduced to increase the elasticity of houses, and the new streets were made in straight lines, being wide enough to reduce potential earthquake damage. Benefiting from a wide variety of funds from both the private sector and public institutions, reconstruction in the city centre was relatively swift, starting at the end of the 1750s and ending in the 1780s. However, in other parts of the city and in the less populous parishes rebuilding was often painfully slow. There were about 340 decrees, proclamations, regulations and laws (decretos, alvarás, portarias and editais) concerning reconstruction work from 1755 to 1838façades of buildings47484950. In spite of the death casualties and the initial exodus from the city, the repopulation of Lisbon occurred more or less swiftly and by 1780, the number of dwellings in the same territory of the old 38 Lisbon parishes had surpassed that of 1755. The recovery was faster in the less ruined parishes, and slower in the ruined and burned parishes. Reconstruction was considerably slower outside Lisbon. In Setúbal, ravaged by the tsunami and also devastated by a fire that followed the earthquake, the city center was also rebuilt relatively fast, but many building in some neighborhoods were still to be recovered by the mid-nineteenth century. In Faro, the capital of the Algarve region and one of the most affected, many buildings destroyed in 1755 were still in ruins in the first decades of the twentieth century51. Therefore, in spite of a prompt and decisive immediate response in the most populous parts of Lisbon, the reconstruction rates differed widely according to the regions affected and their own economic importance for the Portuguese economy.

 

3.2. The Long-Term Impact on Economic Policy

Although the earthquake had a substantial, albeit short-lived, influence on the main macroeconomic variables, the long-lasting legacy of the earthquake was a deterioration of the public finances and of the external trade balance, providing both a stimulus and an excuse for an agenda of economic reforms and institutional change introduced by the Pombal-led reformist group that seized power after the disaster. As argued before, the prestige gained from the response to the earthquake gave Pombal an unprecedented political capital in the Portuguese court, which he used in order to implement a series of policies designed not only to enhance the centralization of the (absolutist) state, but also to reduce the dependency vis-à-vis Portugal’s main trading partner, Britain. In many ways, the earthquake was not directly responsible for these developments. After all, many of Pombal’s policies and reforms had already been pondered when he had been an ambassador to Britain in the 1740s52. However, until the earthquake, Pombal did not have the power to implement these reforms53. It is impossible to know whether Pombal would have gone ahead with these reforms if the earthquake had never occurred.

 

 

4. Concluding Remarks

By combining new archival and existing data, this paper is the first thorough study of the economic impact of the 1755 earthquake. This paper presents new estimates for death casualties and damages of the Lisbon 1755 earthquake. The direct cost of the 1755 earthquake is estimated to be between 32 and 48 percent of the Portuguese GDP. Prices and wages rose after 1756 and remained fairly volatile in the years afterwards, and the reconstruction effort led to a rise in the wage premium of skilled construction workers. The earthquake was also crucial for the implementation of a mercantilist policy aimed at improving the trade deficit and the public finances. All in all, the findings of this paper suggest that the earthquake had a greater impact on the Portuguese economy than the existing literature indicates79. In spite of a terrible casualty toll and significant wealth losses, in the long run the 1755 earthquake was beneficial to the Portuguese economy. The disaster was an exogenous shock, which provided an opportunity to reform the economy. The long-term economic performance benefited accordingly, and the situation of economic semi-dependency vis-à-vis Britain was reduced.

 

 

http://ideas.repec.org/p/yor/cherry/06-03.html