Publications

Insurance and financial services across developing countries: an empirical study of coverage and demand

Working paper by Architesh Panda, Peter Lambert, Swenja Surminski on 8 Apr 2020

Analysing household data from 16 developing countries across Asia and Africa, this paper examines the landscape of access to and sources of financial services. The results shed new light on how insurance uptake could be increased through more tailored and targeted products and services that are designed to meet local needs and requirements in the face of climate and other shocks. read more »

Pricing ambiguity in catastrophe risk insurance

Working paper by Simon Dietz, Falk Niehörster on 23 May 2019

The authors of this paper apply a newly developed insurance pricing model to two catastrophe model data sets relating to hurricane risk in two locations in the Atlantic basin, estimating ambiguity loads – the extra insurance premium due to ambiguity – and showing how these depend on the insurer’s attitude to ambiguity. read more »

Sustainability in the insurance industry: what role does it play for the “risk manager of society” (In German)

Policy publication by Swenja Surminski on 7 Mar 2019

Surminski and Täger: Nachhaltigkeit in der Versicherungswirtschaft, Zeitschrift fuer das Versicherungswesen, 04/2019.

Steering the climate system: an extended comment

Working paper by Linus Mattauch, Richard Millar, Frederick van der Ploeg, Armon Rezai, Anselm Schultes, Frank Venmans, Nico Bauer, Simon Dietz, Ottmar Edenhofer, Niall Farrell, Cameron Hepburn, Gunnar Luderer, Jacquelyn Pless, Fiona Spuler, Nicholas Stern, Alexander Teytelboym on 4 Jan 2019

The authors of this comment respond to a recent argument put forward by Lemoine and Rudik (2017), that it is efficient to delay reducing carbon emissions because there is substantial inertia in the climate system. Mattauch et al. show that there is no such inertia, which means there is no lag between carbon emissions and warming. read more »

Letter from Bob Ward to Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (Ranking Member US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology)

Policy publication by on 10 Dec 2018

In this letter Bob Ward invites the Congresswomen to support efforts by American climate researchers to engage with polticians on climate change.

A new north–south divide for climate knowledge? A case study of climate projections in UNFCCC’s National Communications

Working paper by Maurice Skelton, James J. Porter, Suraje Dessai, David N. Bresch, Reto Knutti on 15 Oct 2018

A global north–south divide in the production of climate knowledge exists. This research uses a unique global dataset, the UNFCCC National Communications, to perform a global documentary analysis of scientific submissions from 189 individual countries.

Recommendations for improving the treatment of risk and uncertainty in economic estimates of climate impacts in the Sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report

Research article by Thomas Stoerk, Gernot Wagner, Bob Ward on 1 Aug 2018

Large discrepancies persist between projections of the physical impacts of climate change and economic damage estimates. These discrepancies increase with increasing global average temperature projections. Based on this observation, … read more »

From advocacy to action: Projecting the health impacts of climate change

Research article by Declan Conway on 31 Jul 2018

Mitigating climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions has many health co-benefits and is a top public health priority. Policies to limit emissions are associated with improvements across a wide … read more »

Building narratives to characterise uncertainty in regional climate change through expert elicitation

Research article by Suraje Dessai, Ajay Gajanan Bhave, Cathryn Birch, Declan Conway, Luis Garcia-Carreras, John Paul Gosling, Neha Mittal, David Stainforth on 26 Jun 2018

Knowledge about regional and local climate change can inform climate risk assessments and adaptation decisions. However, estimates of future precipitation change at the regional and local level are deeply uncertain for many parts of the world. A novel methodology was developed that uses climate processes and expert elicitation to build narratives of future regional precipitation […]

Social discounting: social opportunity cost, social time preference and risk

Working paper by Michael Spackman on 26 Apr 2018

This paper addresses enduring misunderstandings about ‘social opportunity cost’ versus ‘social time preference’ discounting. read more »