A disaster always rings twice: Early life experiences and central bankers' reactions to natural disasters

Abstract

We analyze the impact of natural disasters experienced in the early life of central bankers to assess their reaction to present-day similar events. We use a panel dataset covering 68 (developed and developing) countries, for the period 2000 Q1 to 2017 Q4, to examine how the very-short-run

Forever young: Relative age effects in Belgian political selection

“…It may create persistent inequalities among individuals as their RA not only impacts their personal (psychological) development but also determines the roles they are assigned and the opportunities they are offered at a young age. The long‐term implications document how politicians' early life experiences may have long lasting influence (Aslam et al, 2021). The general view (Tukiainen et al, 2019) on the observed RAE in politics is that this may lead to irreversible loss of potential talents among the relatively young.…”

Trust a few: natural disasters and the formation of trust in Africa

“…The study by Falco and Corbi (2023) looks at natural disaster exposure in the impressionable years, linking it to pro-environmental attitudes in adulthood. Aslam et al (2021 study the policy-making behaviour of central bankers, showing that their exposure to natural disasters in the impressionable years is associated with acting conservatively.…”

“…Second, we add to the growing body of literature on the impressionable years hypothesis. The literature has shown that economic or political context or shocks experienced during the period of great mental plasticity in early adulthood have long-term influences on preferences for redistribution (Roth and Wohlfart 2018), support for democracy (Pyle 2021), self-censoring (Etchegaray et al 2019), risk tolerance (Aslam et al 2021) and confidence in government administration (Aksoy et al 2020;Chavez 2018), among others. The evidence on the consequences of exposure to natural disasters in the impressionable years is limited.…”

“…In particular, Falco and Corbi (2023) use data across countries and within the United States to show that natural disasters experienced in the impressionable years are associated with pro-environmental attitudes. Crosscountry studies by Aslam et al (2021 on central bankers, on the other hand, show that natural disaster exposure in the impressionable years leads to more conservative behaviours in policy-making. Our paper adds to the emerging work on the exposure to natural disasters, as a specific type of shock, in the impressionable years and is the first to do so in the African context.…”