Disastrous Discretion: Political Bias in Relief Allocation Varies Substantially with Disaster Severity Unavailable

We thank the editor and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. We would also like to thank Axel Dreher, Mitchell Downey, Peter Egger, Vera Eichenauer, Roland Hodler, Panu Poutvaara, Lynda Powell, David Schönholzer, Michael Siegenthaler, Leo Simon, Eric Strobl, David Strömberg, Jan-Egbert Sturm, Richard Sylves, Anna Tompsett, and Katherine Wagner for their great comments. We are also grateful for remarks from participants at the Beyond Basic Questions Workshop 2018 in Gengenbach, the CESifo Area Conference on Public Economics 2022, the Workshop on Compound Weather and Climate Events 2021, the European Public Choice Society Meeting 2019 in Jerusalem, the Giannini ARE Student Conference (GARESC) 2019 at UC Davis, the Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance 2021, the Silvaplana Workshop on Political Economy 2020 in Pontresina, the SkiLLS Workshop 2020 in Engelberg, the Spring Meeting of Young Economists 2019 in Brussels, the Conference of the Verein für Socialpolitik 2019 in Leipzig, the Young Swiss Economists Meeting 2019 in Zurich, and research seminars at Freiburg University, Heidelberg University, and Stockholm University. Furthermore, we are very grateful to David Roth, Carl Klarner, and James Snyder for sharing their data sets. Moreover, we thank Theresa Geyer, Tobias Hellmundt, and Mathias Schneider for their excellent research assistance. Sven Kunze received funding for this project from the Joachim Herz Foundation. Note that a previous discussion paper version of this article featured the variant title “Disastrous Discretion: Ambiguous Decision Situations Foster Political Favoritism.”

A supplemental appendix is available online at https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01319.