Doğal Afet Önlemlerinin Politik Ekonomisi

Abstract

Societies do not take adequate action to prevent/mitigation and transfer of risk against natural disaster hazards. The public sector needs to intervene in market failures arising from problems such as imperfect/asymmetric information, myopia, collective inertia. Thus, the fiscal burden of natural disasters on public finance can be reduced and social welfare can be increased by the more efficient allocation of social resources. However, the public sector also fails in this regard. There are political motivations that prevent effective natural disaster risk management. Politicians pay more attention to policies that will provide them electoral support in the short term due to the problem of time inconsistency in public finances. For this reason, they do not make enough regulations and investments for natural disaster measures, if the benefits of the measures appear in the long term and put a burden on voters in the short term. They prefer disaster aids due to election supports. The solution to the problems arising from political motivations depends on the establishment of institutional mechanisms to increase democratic accountability and raise awareness of the risks of natural disasters.