Agricultural production is substantially affected by the variations in global weather patterns, particularly by the El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Thus, incorporating the forecast of imminent ENSO phases can enhance the effectiveness of crop insurance and mitigate the adverse impacts of weather on agriculture. Given the probabilistic nature of the ENSO phase forecast, we employ a Bayesian framework to estimate the value of ENSO information on various aspects of crop insurance. Our results indicate potential benefits of ENSO forecast to insurance rate setting and policy selection. At the same time, we caution against overoptimism in this assessment as economic benefits may diminish as the accuracy of ENSO forecast decreases. Simulations and numerical experiments demonstrate the practical usefulness of the proposed method for various stakeholders of the US crop insurance industry. Implications to various crop insurance policies are also discussed.

中文翻译：

---

在作物保险计划中纳入 ENSO 预测的价值

农业生产受到全球天气模式变化的重大影响，特别是受厄尔尼诺-南方涛动 (ENSO) 影响。因此，结合即将到来的 ENSO 阶段的预测可以提高作物保险的有效性并减轻天气对农业的不利影响。鉴于 ENSO 阶段预测的概率性质，我们采用贝叶斯框架来估计 ENSO 信息在作物保险各个方面的价值。我们的结果表明 ENSO 预测对保险费率设定和政策选择的潜在好处。同时，我们警告不要在此评估中过度乐观，因为随着 ENSO 预测准确性的降低，经济效益可能会减少。模拟和数值实验证明了所提出的方法对美国农作物保险业的各个利益相关者的实际实用性。还讨论了对各种作物保险政策的影响。