Ex-post evaluation of the socio-economic impacts of drought in some areas in Europe

This essay analyzes the allocative and distributive impact of some recent drought events in a number of EU locations. Anaysis is conducted ex-post, based on reported events and concretely implemented adaptation actions, in order to assess the magnitude of economic impacts. The study demonstrates that impacts are far from trivial, but they affect economic sectors and regions in a rather different way, possibly with winners and losers. While adaptation policies have been rather effective, impacts could have been significantly lower; yet the presence of winners and losers suggest that a cheap adaptation strategy consists in implementing insurance mechanisms to compensate losers, at the river basin or possibly national scale.