Direct Climate Markets: the Prospects for Trading Teleconnection Risk

This dissertation provides the analysis necessary to launch the first direct climate markets. Combining statistical modeling with qualitative interviews, I build off of an innovative insurance project to show why and how to start traded markets on indexes of El Niño/La Niña. I provide statistical mo...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cavanaugh, Grant
Format: Others
Published: UKnowledge 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://uknowledge.uky.edu/agecon_etds/16
http://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=agecon_etds
Description
Summary:This dissertation provides the analysis necessary to launch the first direct climate markets. Combining statistical modeling with qualitative interviews, I build off of an innovative insurance project to show why and how to start traded markets on indexes of El Niño/La Niña. I provide statistical models of El Niño/La Niña's worldwide economic impacts; a stochastic catalog used to price virtually any risk management contract on El Niño/La Niña, even as new forecasts change traders' expectations; a comprehensive statistical description of the lifecycle of new derivatives showing how the prospects for new derivatives changed fundamentally in the last decade (this work is co-authored by Michael Penick, Senior Economist at the US government's derivatives regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission); and, interviews with risk management professionals at businesses facing El Niño/La Niña risk and financial firms interested in trading that risk. Based on this analysis, I conclude that catastrophe bonds settling on NOAA's Niño 3.4 sea surface temperatures can, and likely will, launch in the near future.