On the amount of counterpart assistance to be provided after natural disasters: from the perspective of indirect economic loss assessment

China’s counterpart assistance policy is of vital importance in providing guidance for emergency management and post-disaster reconstruction. However, the amount of assistance that partner provinces should provide as well as the criteria that partners should abide by in offering counterpart assistance remain a main challenge. The goal of this research is to fill this gap by proposing a new framework consisting of an interregional input–output (IRIO) model and a resilience index. Subsequently, the indirect economic loss is obtained by utilizing the index system of provincial economic resilience assessments, with measures of indirect economic loss developed from the IRIO. Furthermore, to examine the internal validity and systematic error, the reliability of the adopted models, the calculation methods, and the index systems are investigated. To assess the external validity of the proposed measures and resilience index of the framework, data from the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake are applied for estimating parameter values of the framework, and a follow-up investigation was conducted for examining the fairness and enhanced effectiveness of the new counterpart assistance criteria. In summary, this paper attempts to present some new ideas about the analysis of economic motivations of mutual aid and the improvement of the counterpart assistance policy.