Job Market Paper
Agglomeration Beyond Productivity: Economic Organization
and Resilience to Natural Disasters
Agglomeration generates economic benefits by concentrating economic activity, but whether these
same urban structures amplify or mitigate vulnerability to natural disasters remains unclear.
I examine how industrial composition, road networks, and trade linkages shape disaster resilience
across U.S. metropolitan areas.
Natural disasters reduce local economic activity by approximately 3 percent on average.
Valuing the associated loss in electricity service, the median estimated economic loss is equivalent to approximately 14 percent of monthly MSA GDP.
The effect varies substantially with urban structure. Greater industrial concentration more than doubles the decline,
whereas more centralized road networks and stronger intra-city goods sourcing reduce it by around half.
The effects of industrial concentration also depend on where that concentration occurs,
with concentration in Manufacturing mitigating disaster impacts and concentration in Accommodation,
Wholesale Trade, and Transportation and in Health and Education amplifying them.
These findings show that urban structures associated with agglomeration can either amplify or
mitigate disaster impacts, making resilience an important dimension of how the benefits and
costs of agglomeration are evaluated.
