Working paper & first chapter of the dissertation by Daria Ageikina, supervised by Pierre Mérel, Jamie Hansen-Lewis, Michael Springborn
Abstract: Wildfires present an increasing threat to many parts of the United States due to climate change. The paper examines whether sociopolitical pressure, measured by the newspaper coverage of wildfires, affects the allocation of personnel and aerial resources during wildfire suppression. Using a rich dataset of wildfire events from the Incident Status Summary (ICS-209) reports between 1999 and 2014, the study identifies causal effects using (1) a comprehensive set of variables controlling for wildfire threat, (2) the exogenous variation in the publication of significant historical events occurring just before the discovery of the wildfires. The analysis reveals that increased newspaper coverage of wildfires leads to significantly higher personnel usage. The paper does not find a significant effect of newspaper coverage on aircraft usage.
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