Publisher's Synopsis
In the United States, federal, state, and local governments share responsibility for managing disaster risk. Whether the current allocation of risk between these different levels of government is appropriate is much debated. In the study reported here, the authors contributed to this debate by improving the understanding of state and local financial risk management practices and the role that the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) Public Assistance (PA) program plays in these decisions. They found that a significant portion of state and local governments that are eligible for PA purchase some type of insurance for their buildings, contents, vehicles, and equipment (BCVE) but that the insurance share across all PA projects is low, meaning that FEMA is paying for a substantial portion of the repairs. However, the insurance share varies by the attributes of the incident causing the damage and of the public entity. Regarding the
