Climate risks and weather derivatives: A copula-based pricing model

Giacomo Maria Bressan and Silvia Romagnoli

Journal of Financial Stability, 2021, vol. 54, issue C

Abstract: The paper focuses on the role of climate and weather derivatives (CDs/WDs for short) as instruments to hedge climate risk. The aim of this paper is twofold: (i) we introduce a copula-based pricing methodology for multivariate CDs/WDs, whose flexible theoretical framework allows to be suited to any pricing application and possible structure of multivariate products, and (ii) we discuss the impact of CDs/WDs on climate risk and their implication for financial stability. Using the proposed framework, we illustrate a calibration example on a case study on Italian data. We find that Archimedean copula functions characterized by left tail dependence are generally more suitable to fit the data, depending on the season and the location. We also explore the advantages of using more sophisticated, i.e. multivariate, functions and assess the improvement of fitting. Subsequently, leveraging both the theoretical model and the empirical results, we discuss the relation between climate risk hedging and financial stability. Especially, we move from modeling complexities and limitations to illustrate how incorrect calculations (i.e. mispricings, or over/under estimations of capital at risk) can, alongside with climate change effect, increase rather than reduce the climate physical risk and hence the concerns for financial stability. Finally, we discuss this point in relation with the legislative framework, noting how, in the current context of uncertain legislation and imperfect pricing, climate hedging risks are likely to do more harm than good.

Keywords: Weather derivatives; Climate risk; Climate finance; Climate change; Financial stability; Copula functions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C31 C32 D46 G13 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1572308921000371
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:finsta:v:54:y:2021:i:c:s1572308921000371

DOI: 10.1016/j.jfs.2021.100877

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Financial Stability is currently edited by I. Hasan, W. C. Hunter and G. G. Kaufman

More articles in Journal of Financial Stability from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().