Abstract
Many weather-sensitive industries have experienced great losses due to the increases in extreme weather events, which inducing more and more enterprises to use weather derivatives to hedge their weather-related risks. Besides, only for pricing weather derivatives accurately can we predict the price of weather derivatives reasonably, enterprises, therefore, can make the right hedging strategy. Thus, the primary interest of this thesis is to price weather derivatives. Specifically, I apply no-arbitrage theory and the optimal estimated risk-neutral measure to value weather derivatives. Many have argued that weather derivatives have no unique risk-neutral measures due to their non-tradable feature. However, little literature has addressed the causes of no unique risk-neutral measures. In this thesis, my first goal is to explore the possibilities of these causes. In addition, I incorporate the expected utility theory and analyze the relationship between the utility functions and risk-neutral measures. By doing so, I can explain why I apply no-arbitrage theory and the optimal estimated risk-neutral measure to value weather derivatives. At the end, I compare various approaches of estimating risk-neutral measures, and value the weather derivatives accordingly.