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Mercatus Center at George Mason University
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The Use of Knowledge in Natural Disaster Relief Management
November 15, 2006
To successfully coordinate natural disaster relief, society must solve Hayek’s “knowledge problem” at three critical information nodes: (1) identification of disaster; (2) determination of what relief is needed and who needs which relief resources; and (3) evaluation of on-going relief efforts.
In this working paper, Senior Researchers Russell Sobel and Peter Leeson analyze information asymmetries that appear in top-down efforts at alleviating the effects of natural disasters. This paper investigates the comparative ability of government and the private sector to do this.
The ideas presented in this research are the authors' and do not represent official positions of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
