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“Success comes from an unwavering commitment to excellence.” Puerto Rico Law Firm of the Year O’Neill & Borges LLC has been recognized as the 2017 Law Firm of the Year of Puerto Rico by the prestigious London-based Chambers & Partners, the most respected independent legal directory worldwide. The award was presented in a ceremony held in Miami, Florida on November 17, 2017, along with other leading law firms from Latin America. This is the third time the law firm is recognized with this top award after being recognized in 2011, the first time Chamber’s & Partners surveyed and ranked law firms in Puerto Rico, and then again in 2014. The firm was also recognized as top-ranked law firm in the corporate/commercial, dispute resolution, environmental, labor and employment, real estate and tax practice areas. O’Neill & Borges LLC is honored with this distinction and shares this award once again with its team of attorneys, employees and clients. www.oneillborges.com - 787(764)8181
Thursday, February 8, <strong>2018</strong> 17 GLOBAL Extreme climate events such as hurricane Maria have drawn global attention Study: Cyclones Unleash Long-Term Economic Stagnation World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Rejects notion that natural disasters stimulate economic growth BY AGUSTÍN CRIOLLO OQUERO a.criollo@cb.pr While many sectors in the United States still deny the reality of climate change further hastened by the human footprint on the planet, the truth is that there are some groups, economists from around the world, for example, already pondering the economic implications, in the long run, relative to the effects of such atmospheric phenomena as Puerto Rico’s recent punch from Hurricane Maria. According to the study, “The Causal Effect of Environmental Catastrophe on Long-Run Economic Growth,” by economists Solomon M. Hsiang, professor at the School of Public Policy at University of California at Berkley, and Amir S. Jina, professor at the School of Public Policy at Chicago University, who reviewed evidence from 6,700 cyclones that occurred over a period of six decades, and their effect on different economies. A catastrophe, such as the one Puerto Rico experienced, has permanent effects on any country. Likewise, the information gleaned from the study categorically rejects the hypothesis that natural disasters stimulate economic growth or that in the short term, losses disappear following emigration and wealth transfers. In an article published by the New York Times (NYT), just nine days after the hurricane, and titled “Don’t Let Puerto Rico Fall Into an Economic Abyss,” Hsiang argues that unfortunately the greater cost of the disaster is yet to be seen because the study unequivocally reveals that hurricanes have a strong impact on the economic growth of a country, even decades after the event. According to Hsiang, historically, one out of 10 cyclone events slows the per capita income of the affected country until it is some 7% poorer than two decades before the storm. This, he states, equals the losses due to an average financial or banking crisis, and he expressed the impact from Hurricane Maria could be worse than has been estimated. “To determine how much it worsens, we used an econometric model of the costs of cyclones in the past 60 years and applied it to the characteristics of Hurricane Maria and the economic conditions prior to the storm in Puerto Rico. We calculated that Maria could reduce incomes in Puerto Rico by 21% during the next 15 years, totaling $180 billion in losses in economic production,” said Hsiang in the NYT article. “Supposing that Puerto Rico would have been on its way to maintain its per capita annual growth of 0.8% between 2009 and 2015, then we would expect Maria to undo all those gains and more. Now, it could take 26 years for the next generation to return to where we are today, assuming the per capita growth rate would have continued [as it had],” he added. According to the study by Hsiang and his colleague Jina, the goods of the United States are much more given to being destroyed by a cyclone of such magnitude, than the goods of other countries or jurisdictions that are well-off, such as Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. This is due in part to the fragility of the infrastructure, which more closely resembles We calculated that Maria could reduce incomes in Puerto Rico by 21% during the next 15 years, totaling $180 billion in losses in economic production. — Solomon M. Hsiang, professor at the School of Public Policy at University of California at Berkley that of a less prosperous country. “That definitely was the case with the electricity system in Puerto Rico, administered by a public corporation that filed for bankruptcy last summer. The island’s entire electrical infrastructure was destroyed by the storm. We are not ready and that will cost us a high price,” the economist predicted. Hsiang’s ominous prediction becomes more visible after the World Economic Forum (WEF), held in Davos, Switzerland, at the beginning of the year, and that had as a title “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World,” listed extreme climate events as one of the latent global risks, along with arms of massive destruction, according to the community of experts associated with WEF. The opinion of these experts was collected through an internal survey among business specialists, government representatives, nonprofit organizations and other international institutions. The questionnaire asked the respondents to list, from one to five, the bigger risks they visualized could build the biggest impact. However, although every region of the planet had representation in the questionnaire, 65% of those surveyed came from countries in Europe and North America.
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