Natural disasters are an important source of vulpnerability in the Caribbean region. Despite being one of the more disaster-prone areas of the world, it has one of the lowest levels of insurance coverage. This paper examines the vulnerability of Belize's public finance to the occurrence of hurricanes and the potential impact of insurance instruments in reducing that vulnerability. The paper finds that catastrophic risk insurance significantly improves Belize's debt sustainability. In addition, the methodology employed makes it possible to estimate the appropriate level of insurance, which for the case of Belize is a maximum coverage of US$120 million per year

While the pandemic lasts, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) will go through a tunnel full of uncertainty. It is not known especially how long it is: how long until therapies or a vaccine emerge, or until best practices are known to control the pandemic to live with a virus of unknown lethality. This note describes policy options on how countries can expand their possibilities to meet the economic challenges of the crisis, with an emphasis on growth and equity. These options are based on the assumption that the fiscal situation of the region and its access to sovereign credit markets are much more restricted than in previous crises, which forces to think about policy reforms beyond fiscal ones to accelerate the Economic recovery. The options are ambitious, but the ambition meets the need. This document is part of a series of 3 IDB monographs on public policies in the context of COVID-19. The other documents can be consulted at the following links: Public Policy to Tackle COVID-19: Recommendations for Latin America and the Caribbean: https://publications.iadb.org/en/public-policy-to-tackle-covid-19-recommendations-for--latin-america-and-the-caribbean From Lockdown to Reopening: Strategic Considerations for the Resumption of Activities in Latin America and the Caribbean within the framework of Covid-19 https://publications.iadb.org/en/from-lockdown-to-reopening-strategic-considerations-for-the-resumption-of-activities-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean-within-the-framework-of-covid-19

We study the daily behavior of supermarket prices and product availability following two recent natural disasters: the 2010 earthquake in Chile and the 2011 earthquake in Japan. In both cases there was an immediate and persistent effect on product availability. The number of goods available for sale fell 32% in Chile and 17% in Japan from the day of the disaster to its lowest point, which occurred 61 and 18 days after the earthquakes, respectively. Product availability recovered slowly, and a significant share of goods remained out of stock after six months. By contrast, prices were stable for months, even for goods that were experiencing severe shortages. These trends are present at all levels of aggregation, but there is heterogeneity across categories. We further look at the frequency and magnitudes of price changes in both countries and find that the results in Chile are consistent with pricing models where retailers have fear of "customer anger". In Japan the evidence suggests a bigger role for supply disruptions that restricted the ability of retailers to re-stock goods after the earthquake.

This paper uses a dynamic optimization model to estimate the welfare gains that a small open economy can derive from insuring against natural disasters with catastrophe (CAT) bonds. We calibrate the model by reference to the risk of earthquakes, floods and storms in developing countries. We find that the countries most vulnerable to these risks would find it optimal to use CAT bonds for insurance only if the cost of issuing these bonds were significantly smaller than it is in the data. The welfare gains from CAT bonds range from small to substantial depending on how insurance affects the country's external borrowing constraint. The option of using CAT bonds may bring a welfare gain of several percentage points of annual consumption by improving external debt sustainability. These large gains disappear if the country can opportunistically default on its external debt.