Publication
Firm finances, weather derivatives and geography 2008
Pollard JS; Oldfield J; Randalls S; Thornes J
Abstract
This paper considers some intellectual, practical and political dimensions of collaboration between human and physical geographers exploring how firms are using relatively new financial products - weather derivatives - to displace any costs of weather-related uncertainty and risk. The paper defines weather derivatives and indicates how they differ from weather insurance products before considering the geo-political, cultural and economic context for their creation. The paper concludes by reflecting on the challenges of research collaboration across the human-physical geography divide and suggests that while such initiatives may be undermined by a range of institutional and intellectual factors, conversations between physical and human geographers remain and are likely to become increasingly pertinent. The creation of a market in weather derivatives raises a host of urgent political and regulatory questions and the confluence of natural and social knowledges, co-existing within and through the geography academy, provides a constructive and creative basis from which to engage with this new market and wider discourses of uneven economic development and climate change. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2006.03.008
- Geoforum
- Volume: 39
- Number: 2
- Pagination: 616-624
- Publisher: Pergamon
- Date: 01-03-2008
- ISBN/ISSN: 0016-7185, 1872-9398
|
Dr Jane Pollard
|
|
|
|
