Two ISU economics professors have found proof of Iowa’s durable economy.

Dave Swenson and Liesl Eathington compiled a report evaluating the hit Iowa’s economy took after the 2008 flood, and they found that overall, the economy persevered and worked through the devastation.

“We found that although the floods of 2008 and other related disasters had a profound and tragic impact on thousands of Iowa households and hundreds of Iowa businesses,” Swenson said, “the overall Iowa economy was able to absorb the devastation and continue to produce goods and services at a rate in excess of the national average that year.”

Swenson said several factors allowed for the financial system to weather the storm, including the large and diverse Iowa City and Cedar Rapids economies.

The team took about two years to collect its data because that data is constantly changing and is not available right away for researchers to analyze.

“We work as economists, that means that we are averse to actually speaking with human beings,” Swenson said. “Seriously, we didn’t talk with anyone. We don’t measure the economy by talking with people, we do it be evaluating secondary data that help us understand how the economy is changing over time.”

The data Swenson and Eathington collected helped them to identify the hardest hit areas. They named six counties as “Very High Impact” areas: Black Hawk, Bremer, Butler, Johnson, Linn and Louisa. “High Impact” counties included Benton, Cerro Gordo, Floyd and Muscatine.

Those 10 counties accounted for 84 percent of household losses, 94 percent of business losses and 79 percent of other public infrastructure losses due to the flood.

The flood also accounted for a short-term bump in the unemployment rate, but after a few months, that increasing number was due more to the recession.

The government played a role in southern Iowa’s quick recovery. Federal and state government appropriations to the tune of $2.4 billion went to flood cleanup and reconstruction. A portion also went to helping homeowners and business owners recover.

However, the money was only concentrated in 10 counties and did not account for the strength of the rest of the state’s resilient economy.

As for the flood Ames endured in August, Swenson and Eathington anticipate no great hit to central Iowa’s economy.

“These recent floods, while very damaging,” Swenson said, “did not have anything like the scope of coverage, nor the degree of damage, that we realized in 2008. More importantly, the floods did not appear to significantly affect farming, industry or business in general.”