Can Markets Discipline Government Agencies? Evidence from the Weather Derivatives Market
研究利用天气衍生品市场这一独特场景，发现芝加哥商品交易所引入天气衍生品合约后，相关气象站温度测量精度提高了13%到20%，表明金融市场通过增加对政府机构数据的监督，能激励其减少测量误差。
ABSTRACT We analyze the role of financial markets in shaping the incentives of government agencies using a unique empirical setting: the weather derivatives market. We show that the introduction of weather derivative contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) improves the accuracy of temperature measurement by 13% to 20% at the underlying weather stations. We argue that temperature‐based financial markets generate additional scrutiny of the temperature data measured by the National Weather Service, which motivates the agency to minimize measurement errors. Our results have broader implications: the visibility and scrutiny generated by financial markets can potentially improve the efficiency of government agencies.