*This paper examines the link between rising political polarization and the intergenerational transmission of political preferences. While parents typically aim for their children to share similar political views, they do not have a clear incentive to transmit more extreme preferences. To reconcile parental motivations with trends in polarization, we develop a two-stage model in which parents exert effort to influence their child’s political orientation, and children later revise their preferences based on peer interactions. Despite parents’ intentions to maintain alignment, transmission failures and social dynamics can amplify polarization across generations. We also explore how political intolerance influences this process and identify which segments of the political spectrum are more likely to preserve political similarity between parents and children.

**There is ample evidence in the literature that developing countries suffer greater and more persistent growth losses from natural disasters than developed countries. This paper shows that a key factor underlying this asymmetry is the size of informality, which is generally larger in developing economies. Using a smooth transition local projection method and a sample of 149 countries, I find that highly informal economies experience deeper and longer-lasting growth contractions following storms, while less informal economies exhibit greater resilience and faster recovery. These results are robust to alternative model specifications, different informality measures, and the inclusion of various country characteristics. To rationalize these findings, the next step will be to develop a two-sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model incorporating disaster shocks, dual labor markets, and financial and labor frictions.