  This paper is devoted to assess the presence of some regularities in the
magnitudes of the earthquakes in Italy between January $24^{th}$, 2016 and
January $24^{th}$, 2017, and to propose an earthquakes cost indicator. The
considered data includes the catastrophic events in Amatrice and in Marche
region. To our purpose, we implement two typologies of rank-size analysis: the
classical Zipf-Mandelbrot law and the so-called universal law proposed by
Cerqueti and Ausloos (2016). The proposed generic measure of the economic
impact of earthquakes moves from the assumption of the existence of a
cause-effect relation between earthquakes magnitudes and economic costs. At
this aim, we hypothesize that such a relation can be formalized in a functional
way to show how infrastructure resistance affects the cost. Results allow us to
clarify the impact of an earthquake on the social context and might serve for
strengthen the struggle against the dramatic outcomes of such natural
phenomena.
