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Trial Status in_development on_going
Abstract In many urban communities, insufficient drainage, and minimal urban planning means that seasonal rainfall brings with it the risk of regular flooding of homes and businesses. Persistent flooding poses a multitude of challenges for businesses in these areas as it can destroy inventory, limit movement of workers and customers, and overall decrease firm performance. Changing rainfall patterns due to anthropogenic climate change heightens the need to better understand the currently underexplored impacts of seasonal flooding, particularly on small firms. My work seeks to understand the impact of seasonal flooding on small firm performance and investment in urban Dakar, Senegal by collecting detailed firm-level data on investment, inventory, worker behavior, consumer behavior and flood risk perception, community data on infrastructure and drainage characteristics. I will then run a randomized experiment to understand the impacts of flood adaptation strategies and to identify local spillover effects of flood adaptation. With parameters estimated from the data and the experiment, I will develop a model of investment by firms to explore barriers to adaptation and defensive investment. I will use this model to highlight risks of anthropogenic climate change and potential policy interventions to decrease the impact of seasonal flooding. In many urban communities, insufficient drainage, and minimal urban planning means that seasonal rainfall brings with it the risk of regular flooding of homes and businesses. Persistent flooding poses a multitude of challenges for businesses in these areas as it can destroy inventory, limit movement of workers and customers, and overall decrease firm performance. Changing rainfall patterns due to anthropogenic climate change heightens the need to better understand the currently underexplored impacts of seasonal flooding, particularly on small firms. My work seeks to understand the impact of seasonal flooding on small firm performance and investment in urban Dakar, Senegal by collecting detailed firm-level data on investment, inventory, worker behavior, consumer behavior and flood risk perception, community data on infrastructure and drainage characteristics. I will then run a randomized experiment to understand the impacts of flood adaptation strategies and to identify local spillover effects of flood adaptation.
Trial End Date December 31, 2025 June 01, 2026
Last Published November 22, 2024 12:24 PM November 04, 2025 09:37 AM
Secondary Outcomes (End Points) Flood experience during the 2024 rainy season, firm inventory and stockouts, firm operating hours, customer traffic, worker attendance, firm monthly revenue and profits. Flood experience during the 2024 and 2025 rainy season, firm inventory and stockouts, firm operating hours, customer traffic, worker attendance, firm monthly revenue and profits.
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Analysis Plans

Field Before After
Document
Seasonal_Flooding_Dakar_PAP_110425.pdf
MD5: 400dd7c857074636b1044cb90c860a13
SHA1: a84aaf2953df310ac67eddfb51e48131dd731aa7
Title Flood Risk and Differential Firm Investment: Evidence from Dakar, Senegal
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