Lead: Junghoon Lee
Counselor: Clint Andrews

We are using public finance data from (1) the US Census of Governments and (2) NJ municipalities coupled with the Sandy Transparency intergovernmental flows data set to create a simulation model that describes the relationships between local, state, and federal public finance following disasters. Objectives are to describe these flows (think of a Sankey diagram) and explain them. Explanatory efforts include creating agent-based simulation models that experiment with different rule sets for local & central government actors who play the strategic “game” of having the central government cover local budget deficits following disasters, preferably without inducing moral hazard. This is not a local decision support tool but rather seeks to become a basis for informing public policy and social science.