Analyzing The Impact Of Reconstructing Transport Sector On GDP After The Disaster

As one of critical sector for an economy,transport sector is not only vital for rescue but also really important for reconstruction and economy recovery after a disaster.The aim of this paper is to assess impact of reconstructing transport on economy recovery.China is one of the most disaster-prone country in the world,and 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan is the severest disaster since 1978 Tangshan Earthquake in Hebei.Hence,we choose Wenchuan Earthquake as the case to investigate this problem.This paper constructs a systematical dynamic provincial CGE model and assesses the impacts of disaster and reconstruction after a careful discussion about characteristics of earthquake and economy.Existence of ripple effects means that there are two sources of disaster impact,(1)impact from transportation sector,(2)and impact from interruption of other sectors.Hence,we propose three hypotheses: one is about disaster impact on transport output,two are about impact of reconstructing transport sector on GDP.In order to verify these hypotheses,we set five scenarios: 1)disaster free scenario,2)no reconstruction scenario,3)reconstruct all sectors proportionally,4)reconstruct transport sector at first in the second year,5)reconstruct transport sector and its related sectors at first in the second year.For hypotheses,preliminary results support alternative hypotheses.That is,Wenchuan Earthquake causes a great negative impact on transport output of Sichuan Province,which is nearly 32.11% loss.At the same time,we need to reconstruct transport sector and its related sector at first after disaster,which is better than give a prior to transport only or reconstruct each sector proportionally.Sensitivity analysis also supports these two findings.