Previous studies (e.g. Pielke and Landsea, 1998) have shown that the upward trend of economic losses caused by hurricanes in the US was primarily due to increased population and wealth along the coast. The methodology used was based on historical losses normalized by population and wealth. In this study, we first use a natural disaster model to calculate the economic losses that past hurricanes would have caused if the geographical distribution of wealth had been the same as that today. The multidecadal and interannual variability as well as the trend of the modeled economic losses are analyzed. In addition, we investigate the probabilistic characteristics of the economic losses