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Does the Sun Shine Really Shine on the Financial Markets?
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by Fruehwirth, Manfred; Sögner, Leopold

After a series of papers has provided—partially ambiguous—results on the impact of weather
variables on stock (index) returns, this article studies the impact of weather on a wide variety
of financial market instruments, namely "risk-free" interest rates, the US corporate bond
market, stock returns, stock index returns and the VIX volatility index. First, we construct a
model that combines asset pricing and results from psychology to show how weather variables
can a ffect asset prices in diff erent market segments via mood. Second, in our empirical analysis
we use several weather variables from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and
control variables motivated by economic theory. Applying various econometric techniques and
using di fferent market segments (motivated by diff erences in the risk level and institutional
di fferences) allows to give a more detailed picture on the impact of weather on fi nancial market
prices. We demonstrate that on none of the market segments analyzed the weather has any
signi ficant impact.

Publication Type: WCFIA Working Paper
Published Date: June 2012
Field of Interest: International Economics
Fruehwirth, Manfred and Leopold Sögner. "Does the Sun Shine Really Shine on the Financial Markets?" Working Paper 2011-0001, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, June 2012.