One premise adopted in most previous studies is that weather fluctuations affect economic outcomes contemporaneously. Yet under certain circumstances, the impact of weather fluctuations in the current year can be carried over into the future. Using agricultural production as an example, we empirically investigate how past weather fluctuations affect economic decision-making by shifting agents’ subjective expectations over future climate. We find that agricultural producers do not form expectations on future climate using only long-run normals, and instead engage in a combination of heuristics, including the availability heuristic and the reinforcement strategy. Adopting these learning mechanisms causes farmers to significantly over-react to more recent fluctuations in weather and water availability when making ex ante acreage and crop allocation decisions.

先前大多数研究采用的一个前提是，天气波动会同时影响经济结果。但是在某些情况下，今年的天气波动影响可以延续到未来。以农业生产为例，我们通过将代理商对未来气候的主观期望转变为经验，研究过去的天气波动如何影响经济决策。我们发现，农业生产者不会仅使用长期常态来形成对未来气候的期望，而是参与启发式方法的组合，包括可用性启发式方法和强化策略。