SUMMARY This paper traces the yearly response of gross domestic product growth—both aggregated and disaggregated into its agricultural and non‐agricultural components—to four types of natural disasters: droughts, floods, earthquakes, and storms. The paper uses a methodological approach based on pooling the experiences of various countries over time. It consists of vector autoregressions in the presence of endogenous variables and exogenous shocks (VARX), applied to a panel of cross‐country and time series data. The analysis finds heterogeneous effects on a variety of dimensions. First, the effects of natural disasters are stronger on developing than on advanced countries. Second, not all natural disasters are alike in terms of the growth response they induce, and some can even have positive effects on economic growth. Third, severe disasters often carry much worse effects than moderate effects do. Fourth, the timing of the growth response varies with both the type of natural disaster and the sector of economic activity. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Light‐induced melatonin suppression in children is reported to be more sensitive to white light at night than that in adults; however, it is unclear whether it depends on spectral distribution of lighting. In this study, we investigated the effects of different color temperatures of LED lighting on children's melatonin secretion during the night. Twenty‐two healthy children (8.9 ± 2.2 years old) and 20 adults (41.7 ± 4.4 years old) participated in this study. A between‐subjects design with four combinations, including two age groups (adults and children) and the two color temperature conditions (3000 K and 6200 K), was used. The experiment was conducted for two consecutive nights. On the first night, saliva samples were collected every hour under a dim light condition (<30 lx). On the second night, the participants were exposed to either color temperature condition. Melatonin suppression in children was greater than that in adults at both 3000 K and 6200 K condition. The 6200 K condition resulted in greater melatonin suppression than did the 3000 K condition in children (P < 0.05) but not in adults. Subjective sleepiness in children exposed to 6200 K light was significantly lower than that in children exposed to 3000 K light. In children, blue‐enriched LED lighting has a greater impact on melatonin suppression and it inhibits the increase in sleepiness during night. Light with a low color temperature is recommended at night, particularly for children's sleep and circadian rhythm.