Bouncing Back from Extreme Weather Events: Some Preliminary Findings on Resilience Barriers Facing Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises

Extreme weather events (EWEs) pose unprecedented threats to modern societies and represent a much‐debated issue strongly interlinked with current development policies. Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), which constitute a driving force of economic growth, employment and total value added, remain highly vulnerable to and ill prepared for such environmental perturbations. This study investigates barriers to SMEs’ resilience to EWEs in an attempt to shed light on enabling factors that can define effective organizational responses to non‐linear environmental stimuli. Relying on structural equation modeling and data gathered from 109 SMEs that recently experienced EWE impacts, we link the general concept of SMEs’ resilience barriers to EWEs with a series of elements to determine specific internal and external factors that contribute the most to EWE resilience. In particular, external barriers of institutional conditions and mechanisms of support and guidance as well as internal barriers of resources and managerial perceptions are found to be the most critical ones in determining resilience. The assessment offers essential research evidence for practitioners on SME management and sets forth linkages with current mechanisms for policy interventions towards an appropriate resilience agenda for SMEs. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Incentive Contract and Weather Risk

We study contracts designed to remunerate a farmer for the production of an ecosystem service with the payment dependent on the results of the farmer’s actions and on weather conditions. Two contracts are proposed: the first takes into account both the results of the farmer’s actions and a weather variable that reflects the actual atmospheric conditions during the life of the contract; the second bases the payment on the results alone incorporating only the average effect of weather. Social welfare is optimal when both the results and the specific atmospheric conditions are taken into account; however, this type of contract may be less acceptable to the farmer due to his perception of the level of risk involved.We thank two referees for valuable comments.     

中国证券市场价格波动与宏观经济协同性的实证研究

理论上，证券市场常被称为国民经济的“晴雨表”。本文选取工业增加值、广义货币供应量（M2）、消费者景气指数和国房景气指数等宏观经济指标，深入考察了宏观经济与沪深两市股价走势之间的关系。结果表明，在样本期内股价指数波动与宏观经济变量之间不存在协整性特征，中国证券市场与国民经济之间尚未呈现出稳定的长期均衡关系，证券市场并未发挥“国民经济晴雨表”的功能。这也表明，中国证券市场的宏观协调效率还有待于进一步提高。     

Mood and Judgment of Subjective Probabilities: Evidence from the U.S. Index Option Market

Numerous psychological studies show that weather conditions affect people'smood and that mood states are correlated with people's subjective evaluationof future probabilities. In this paper, a new approach is developed and assetmarket data are employed to test the mood-subjective probability relation. Cloudcover and precipitation volume serve as two mood proxies. Our statistical analysissuggests that bad mood states are characterized by investors placing higher probabilitieson adverse events.     

Model Comparison for Temperature-Based Weather Derivatives in Mainland China

Abstract:

In this paper, we provide a comparison of two models of temperature-based weather derivatives. The Alaton et al. model (2002) and the continuous-time autoregressive (CAR) model of Benth et al. (2007) are applied to temperature data from twelve cities in China. The objective is to determine which is the better model for temperature derivative modeling in Chinese cities. We found the CAR model to be more accurate in terms of normality of residuals and smaller relative errors. However, the shortcomings of both the Alaton et al. model and the CAR model are revealed in this study as well.     

Can (unusual) weather conditions in New York predict South African stock returns?

This paper investigates the explanatory power of certain weather variables, measured as deviations from their monthly averages, in a leading international financial trading centre, i.e., New York, for South African stock returns, over the daily period January 2nd, 1973 to December, 31, 2015. The empirical results highlight that these unusual deviations of weather variables have a statistically significant negative effect on the stock returns in South Africa, indicating that unusual weather conditions in New York can be used to predict South African stock returns, which otherwise seems to be highly unpredictable. In fact, a forecasting exercise recommends that a trading rule that considers those weather variables through a GARCH modelling approach seems to outperform the random walk model and thus beat the market.     

气候变化下湖北省稻谷生长期降雨量指数保险设计

[目的]气候变化对我国粮食生产造成巨大损失,传统农业保险存在较多问题,天气指数农业保险作为金融创新工具,成为转移农业天气风险的有力路径。[方法]文章在分析降雨量指数保险合约设计思路的基础上,依照天气指数保险合约定义,选取稻谷生长期每日降水的累积降雨量作为天气指标,采用经济—气候模型和湖北省78个县市的面板数据,按风险区域分别设计了干旱指数保险合约和暴雨灾害指数保险合约。[结果]虽然湖北省全省累积降水的影响总体是负向的,但累积降水量对稻谷单产在十堰、襄阳等干旱区域的边际影响是正向的、显著的,累积降水量在暴雨集中区域江汉平原地区、咸宁市及辖内县市,有着显著的负向影响。[结论]气候变化对粮食生产的影响显著,根据面板数据的估计结果,有必要按不同的风险区域分别设计天气指数保险合约。该文的研究在天气指数保险设计方面做出了一定的探索,进一步使天气指数保险合约成为转移农业天气风险的有力创新工具。     

中国名山旅游气候资源及气象景观评价

分别从发生学、外部形态、位置高度对名山气象景观进行了分类,选取了我国六大名山,对其气象景观类型和旅游气候资源进行了分析,提出了评价名山气象景观的量化方法,把名山气象景观分为3个等级,对我国六大名山进行了评价,结果表明该方法在名山气象景观评价中具有很好的应用价值。     

Optimal Insurance Against Climatic Experience

An optimal insurance contract against a climatic risk is derived in the presence of an uninsurable and dependent aggregate production risk. The optimal design depends on the stochastic dependency between both sources of uncertainty and on the producer's attitude towards risk, especially on his prudent behavior. Rational weather insurance purchasing decisions are also derived. The prudent producer responds to actuarially fair weather insurance by increasing his exposure towards risk.     

State‐contingent analysis of farmers’ response to weather variability: irrigated dairy farming in the Murray Valley,Australia

The agricultural sector is commonly regarded as one of the most vulnerable to climate change. Current understanding of the impact of climate change on this sector relies on the underlying assumptions about farmers’ possible responses to weather variability, including changes in crop choice, input combinations and land management practices. Many previous analyses rely on the implicit (and restrictive) assumption that farmers operate under a fixed technology set across different states of nature. This assumption, represented through stochastic production or profit functions, is commonly made but seldom tested and may understate farmers’ responses to climate change if state‐contingent production technologies are, in reality, more flexible. The potential for farmers to adapt production technologies in response to unforeseen events is at the core of the state‐contingent approach. Advanced in Chambers and Quiggin (2000), the theory contends that producers can manage uncertainty through the allocation of productive inputs to different states of nature. In this article, we test the assumption that farmers’ observed behaviour is consistent with the state‐contingent production theory using farm‐level data from Australia. More precisely, we estimate the milk production technology for a sample of irrigated dairy farms from the southern Murray–Darling Basin over the period from 2006–2007 to 2009–2010.