Data for our main variable of interest, foreign aid p. c., stem from the World Development Indicators (WDI). Although EM-DAT provides figures on international disaster assistance for some major earthquake events, there is no comprehensive collection on financial disaster aid that compiled such data in a concise manner. The study by stroemberg07a used data on U.S. disaster assistance and its determinants. In contrast, we assume that expectations about international disaster relief are formed by general aid dependency. Therefore we use figures on overall development aid. National data on real GDP per capita and openness for trade are taken from the Penn World Table Version 6.2. Regarding data on income inequality, one could consider the largest collection of data on Gini coefficients is the World Income Inequality Database (WIID, 2000). This data has been already used in the empirical analysis on disaster victims by Strömberg (2007). The problem with measuring income inequality over time and between countries is that the concepts and units of income change thus raising questions on the consistency and quality of the data used Strömberg (2007). To circumvent potential problems and biases, Grün & Klasen (2003) perform a regression-based adjustment to make the Gini-coefficients more comparable. We use the data from that study for our analysis.

Our measure for institutional quality was compiled by Kaufmann, Kraay & Mastruzzi, (2008) for the Worldbank. Institutional quality is defined via six dimensions of governance: Control of Corruption, i.e. the extent to which political power is misused for private benefits. Governmental effectiveness, i. e. the quality and credibility of public and civil service and the independence from political pressure. Political stability, i.e. the probability that the current government will be overthrown by a coup d' tat. Regulatory quality, i.e. the government's ability to design and enforce sound regulations and promote private sector development. Rule of law, i.e. the protection of property rights and the quality of contract enforcement, the police and the courts. Voice and accountability, i.e. freedom of expression and association as well as the possibility to actively participate in the selection of the government. Our second proxy measure for institutional quality is a country's democracy level. We use the Polity 2 variable, which ranges between -10 (autocratic) and 10 (democratic). Information on a nation's colonial background is provided by Correlates of War 2 Project (2008).

As additional controls, we introduce the general mortality risk from each natural disaster. A recent study by Columbia University and the World Bank (Dilley, Chen, Deichmann, LernerLam, Arnold, Agwe, Buys, Kjekstad, Lyon & Yetman 2005) uses spatial data on historical disaster occurrence and population density and constructs a measure of the geographical distribution of mortality risk from natural disasters worldwide. In the appendix Figures 3, 5 and 7 show the regions with storm, flood and earthquake mortality risk in the world, respectively and Figures 4, 6 and 8 are maps focused on each risk in Asia in order to get a better idea of the resolution of the data. The darker the grid cells, the larger the mortality risk on a 10-point scale. We use this GIS-data and combine it with a shape file of national boundaries to calculate a country's mean exposure to disaster mortality. Data for additional geographical controls (latitude and elevation) stem from the dataset provided by (Kahn 2005). Table 2 reports the mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum of the variables in the estimated cross-section models for each sub-sample.

[Table 2 about here] 10