Pilar Paneque

Towards a more flexible water concession system in Spain: public water banks in Andalusia

The traditional management paradigm that has governed water policy in Spain during the last century is currently undergoing a critical process of change. Recently, regional Andalusian and national legislation have developed a new framework, where novel strategies, based on the reallocation of concessional rights, can be adopted to respond to water shortage conditions. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that could potentially affect the legal reform in Andalusia, which is targeted at developing a market-based redistribution system of water rights in the various river basins within the region.

Risk Perceptions on Hurricanes: Evidence from the U.S. Stock Market

This article examines the market reaction of the main Property and Casualty (P & C) insurance companies listed in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to seven most recent hurricanes that hit the East Coast of the United States from 2005 to 2012. For this purpose, we run a standard short horizon event study in order to test the existence of abnormal returns around the landfalls. P & C companies are one of the most affected sectors by such events because of the huge losses to rebuild, help and compensate the inhabitants of the affected areas. From the financial investors’ perception, this kind of events implies severe losses, which could influence the expected returns. Our research highlights the existence of significant cumulative abnormal returns around the landfall event window in most of the hurricanes analyzed, except for the Katrina and Sandy Hurricanes.

Methodology for the analysis of causes of drought vulnerability on the River Basin scale

The concept of vulnerability has emerged in recent decades as a key concept for the research on drought risk as well as in the implementation of mitigation strategies of drought risk. The context within which this concept emerges is one of scientific consensus: the research community agrees that we are witnessing a paradigm shift in water management policies, within a broader framework of changes in the relationship between humans and nature. In this context, vulnerability studies must become an instrument for the assessment and mitigation of risk. Based on the proposals put forward by the IPCC concerning the components of vulnerability (exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity), this paper proposes a methodology for the evaluation and analysis of drought vulnerability on the river basin scale. The methodology results in the calculation of a Drought Vulnerability Index (DVI) and the use of different techniques for the interpretation of results.