Date of Award
5-1-2026
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Economics
First Advisor
Watts, Alison
Abstract
The paper uses various types of county level data; age, race, log income per capita,log population, education, patent, hurricane frequency, hurricane exposure and RUCC from different sources to estimate the impact of hurricane exposure on patent in the United States. To estimate the result, the study uses fixed effect regression and cross-sectional analysis. Using the RUCC as a fixed effect to rule out heterogeneity issues, the results suggest that both hurricane events and hurricane frequency have a negative impact on patents. To differentiate the extent of negative effect, the study does cross sectional analysis with each RUCC. The result shows that urban regions experience more negative effects than rural regions. The estimation of the result is robust, since both hurricane events and hurricane frequency show a highly consistent pattern on the result.
Access
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