Solar Activity and Perturbations in Economy and Society
Our research aims to propose a consistent theory
explaining the empirically observed impact of the cyclical fluctuations in the
solar activity on economy and society. Unemployment increases, consumer and
business confidence drops, and recessions in the US and G7 countries occur more
frequently in the years around and after the solar maximums. This is consistent
with the findings of the Russian scientist Alexander Chizhevsky, who in the early XX century claimed that the
cyclical maximums in the solar activity affect human behavior and well-being.
In particular, they increase the occurrence of revolutions, riots, and mass
movements and lead to intensification of political life. Apart from producing
direct negative impact on the economies of the affected countries, such
commotions increase uncertainty, which hampers consumer and business
confidence, weakens economic activity and, ultimately, triggers recessions.
Also, the negative impact of the sun-induced fluctuations in the geomagnetic
field on human health and well-being can affect consumer demand, labor
productivity, and consumer confidence.
One more look at the solar activity and its impact on earth
For the last hundred years or more, the primary
index of solar activity has been the sunspot number (often denoted Rz). It has a prominent 11-year cycle, named after
German astronomer Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, who discovered it in 1843 with less than 11
years of data. The cycles are numbered since 1750 (cycle 1 = 1755 minimum to
1766 minimum). In recent years, many other solar indices were established
(notably the 2800MHz, 10.7cm radio emission flux, denoted as F10, recorded
since 1947). All these show an 11-year cycle, except that during sunspot
minimum when sunspot numbers almost reach zero, most of the other indices reach
a minimum nonzero level (Kane, 2002). In cycle 18, data for very few indices
were available. Thereafter, the number has increased considerably from one
cycle to the next. Table 1 lists the indices considered for cycles 18–23,
in the order of their approximate altitude of origin in the solar atmosphere,
starting from solar radio emissions in solar corona and ending with sunspots at
the photosphere. Since all solar indices attain their maxima near sunspot
maximum and minima near sunspot minimum, the long-term correlation between all
indices is very high.
A curious feature of the long-term activity is
the evolution of sunspot numbers near sunspot maximum. In some cycles, Rz
rose rapidly to a maximum
and fell thereafter rapidly, giving the impression of a sharp peak. In some
other cycles, the rise of Rz from the sunspot minimum halted after a few years, the level
remained almost steady for the next few years, giving the impression of a
plateau, and then there was a sharp fall up to the next sunspot minimum.
Whereas most of the other indices of solar activity had coinciding sharp
maxima, in some cases, further evolution was not similar to the sunspot number
(Kane, 2002).
Moreover, solar activity modulates intensity and
energy spectrum of the galactic cosmic rays reaching earth (Gupta et al.,
2006). For most of the years, cosmic ray intensity correlates negatively with
sunspot number. However, poor correlations are observed during the high and low
solar activity years. Also, cosmic rays correlate negatively with geomagnetic
activity (Tiwari et al.
2011).
And it has long been recognized that the solar
activity is at the origin of the geomagnetic activity. The latter is the result
of variable current systems formed in the magnetosphere and ionosphere as a
consequence of the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere and is
described quantitatively by means of so-called geomagnetic indices. Among the
indices designed to provide a global picture of the degree of disturbance
level, the aa index covers the longest time span (the time series starts in
1868) and is well suited as a proxy of geomagnetic activity in long-term studies.
This index has been compiled from the range of variations of the geomagnetic
field over periods of 3 hours (the K index) at two near-antipodal observatories
in England and Australia. The long-term behavior of the geomagnetic activity
and its resemblance to the long cycle in the solar activity, as well as
peculiarities of the 11-year cycle of aa, such as the second peak in the declining phase
of the sunspot cycle and the increase of the minimum values during the
twentieth century, have been discussed by several authors. Their main
conclusion was that the upward drift in geomagnetic activity is caused by heliospheric
conditions, represented by
the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) strength, the solar wind speed, and the
solar wind density (Demetrescu, 2008).
The impact of solar activity on the climate on earth is a subject
of much debate. Broadly speaking, changes in the amount of radiation emitted by
the sun and in its spectral distribution over years could have had an impact on
climate, but strictly proving it is difficult for the lack of detailed data on
climate and sun activity going so deep in history. For example, the so-called
Maunder Minimum of the solar activity from about 1645 to 1715 coincided with
the middle (and coldest) part of the so-called Little Ice Age, during which
Europe and North America were subjected to bitterly cold winters. However,
changes in solar brightness were too weak to explain recent climate changes,
including the global warming. Solar irradiance has been measured from
satellites since 1979, which covered about three solar cycles. During this
period, solar irradiance varied by approximately 0.1 percent peak-to-trough
from solar maximum to solar minimum during the 11-year sunspot cycle. A recent
NASA study of the earth’s energy imbalance underscored that greenhouse gases
generated by human activity are the primary force driving global warming,
though changes in solar activity also played a role (Hansen et al., 2011).
Figures
plotting sunspot number, 10.7cm radio emission flux, solar flares, geomagnetic
field indicator (Ap), cosmic rays, and solar irradiance
Solar and
geomagnetic activity indices, 1991-2012
Sunspot numbers and
solar flares, 1965-2009
Smoothed monthly sunspot
numbers for cycles 0-23
Tables
Literature
references
Demetrescu, Crisan, Venera Dobrica, 2008: “Signature of Hale and Gleissberg
solar cycles in the geomagnetic activity,” — Journal of
Geophysical Research, Vol. 113, 2008.
Gupta, Meera, V. K. Mishra, A.P.Mishra, 2006: “Study of cosmic ray intensity variations in relation to solar activity
for sunspot cycles 19 to 23,” — Indian Journal of Radio &
Space Physics, Vol.35, June 2006, pp. 167-173.
Hansen, J., Mki. Sato,
P. Kharecha, and K.
von Schuckmann, 2011: “Earth's energy imbalance and implications,” — Atmos.
Chem. Phys., 11, 13421-13449, doi:10.5194/acp-11-13421-2011.
Kane, R. P., 2002: “Evolutions of various solar indices around
sunspot maximum and sunspot minimum years,” — Annales
Geophysicae (2002) 20: 741–755.
Tiwari, Rakesh
Kumar, Achyut
Pandey, Pankaj K. Shrivstava, Sushil Kumar Srivastava, 2011: “Relationship of cosmic rays with solar and
geomagnetic activity,” — Indian Journal of Scientific &
Industrial Research 2(4) : 15-19, 2011.
Videos
Carrington-class
CME Narrowly Misses Earth
Impact of the solar activity on the frequency and intensity of
historical events
In the early XX century, Russian scientist
Alexander Chizhevsky compared sunspot records to riots, revolutions,
battles and wars in Russia and seventy-one other countries for the period 500
BC to 1922. He discovered that when the sunspot activity approached its
maximum, the number of important mass historical events was increasing as well,
and decreased during the times of the sunspot minimums. This led him to believe
that the periods around sunspot maximums are generally associated with
intensification of human activity. During such periods, revolutions,
insurrections, expeditions, mass migrations, and formation of new states
occurred much more frequently than usual. Many of these events were so
important that they virtually heralded new historical epochs in the life of
humanity (Chizhevsky, 1924).
Consequently, Chizhevsky proposed to divide the eleven-year solar cycle
into four periods according to the degree of the “mass excitability” associated
with it: (1) a 3-year period of minimum activity (around the solar minimum)
characterized by passivity and autocratic rule; (2) a 2-year period during
which people “begin to organize” under new leaders and one theme; (3) a 3-year period
(around the solar maximum) of “maximum excitability”, revolutions and wars; (4)
a 3-year period of gradual decrease in “excitability”, until the people are
apathetic. Based on his studies, Chizhevsky claimed that as much as 60 percent of the most
important historical events occur in the 3-year period associated with maximum
solar activity, and only 5 percent of such events occur in the 3-year period
around the sunspot minimum.
Russian scientist A. Putilov
empirically tested Chizhevsky’s
hypothesis of the solar
cycles’ impact on the historical process. He analyzed samples of near 13
thousand and 4.6 thousand events mentioned in Chronology sections of two
largest Soviet historical handbooks. Events were classified into 4 groups on
the basis of their "strength" and "social contradictions
meaning", called tolerance and polarity: tolerant--intolerant (e.g.,
riot-reform) and polar-neutral (e.g., civil war-external war). It was found
that frequency and polarity of historical events increased in maximum of sunspot
cycle and in the next year after it, particularly when compared with the years
of minimum and before minimum. The probability of revolution (the most polar
and intolerant of historical event) is the highest in maximum and the lowest in
the year before minimum. Intolerance of polar events increased and neutral
events decreased in maximum. All these relations were highly significant (P
< 0.001). It was concluded that the solar activity does impact historic
events, particularly in the years of sunspot maximums (Putilov, 1992).
Our own research, though not so fundamental,
confirmed a positive correlation between solar activity and revolutions. We
compared annual (and monthly) series for sunspot observations with time series
reflecting frequency of particular historical events during each year (and
month) over 1749-2011. For this, we constructed time series for frequency of
world most important revolutions and rebellions; most important political
events; dates celebrated by countries as their national foundation days; and
for the dates of formation of the currently existing sovereign states (counting
also important changes in governance, including births of current form of
government and acquisition of sovereignty). For all these four series of
historical events linked to revolution and political instability, we obtained
positive and statistically significant correlations with the sunspot numbers.
For the annual data, the pairwise correlation ranged from 0.15 – 0.27,
and were all statistically significant at 1 percent level or above (table). It
is interesting to note that the bilateral correlations between thus constructed
historical time series were also positive and highly statistically significant,
ranging from 0.38 – 0.82. This confirmed significant overlap and mutual
consistency of those series, the raw data for which came from different source,
and also indirectly confirmed robustness of our results.
For those historical series where monthly data
were available, the pairwise correlation with the sunspot number remained
positive and statistically significant. The sunspots correlation with the
series for most important political events; dates celebrated by countries as
their national foundation days; and for the dates of formation of the currently
existing sovereign states ranged from [0.09 – 0.10]. These correlations
remained highly significant, at 1 percent or above, as they were calculated on
the monthly data that provided 12 times more observation points, and the
significance threshold was lower than for the annual data.
Chizhevsky’s hypothesis of the solar cycles’ impact on the mass movement and
revolutions finds support from anecdotal data as well. The most important
European revolutions of the XIX and XX century overlapped closely with the
sunspot maximums. Remarkably, both the Great October Socialist Revolution of
1917 in the Russian Empire and the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991, which
could be considered the two most important revolutions of the XX century, both
occurred exactly in the years of solar maximums. In France, all the greatest
revolutions of the modern times including the Great French Revolution of 1789,
the revolutions of 1830 and 1849, and “Paris Commune” in 1871 overlapped very
closely with the solar maximums. In America, the secession of the 13 southern
US states in 1861 that triggered the bloodiest civil war in the continent’s
history occurred in the year of solar maximum. Most recently, the cyclical
increase in the solar activity in the currently unfolding 24th solar cycle overlapped closely with the “Arab
Spring”, a series of revolutions in the Arab countries in 2010-13, and with
revolution in Ukraine in 2013-14.
Figures:
Division of solar
cycle into four periods (by Chizhevsky)
Advent and demise of communism
French Republic timeline, 1785-1975
Frequency of revolutions in the
years of solar cycle, 1775-1995
Tables:
Properties
of four periods in the solar cycle
Correlation
between sunspot numbers and historical events series, 1749-2011
Literature
references
Chizhevsky,
Alexander, 1924: "Physical Factors of the Historical Process,"
— Kaluga, 1924. (In Russian:
А.Чижевский. «Физические
факторы
исторического
процесса.» — Калуга, 1-я Гостиполитография,
1924).
Putilov A. A.,
1992: “Unevenness of distribution of historical events
throughout an 11-year solar cycle”, Biofizika. 1992 Jul-Aug; 37(4):629-35. (In Russian: А.А.
Путилов, «Неравномерность
распределения
исторических
событий в
пределах
11-летнего
солнечного
цикла», Биофизика,
том 32, вып. 4,
1992).
Smelyakov, S.V.,
2006: “Tchijevsky's
Disclosure: How the Solar cycles Modulate the History,” — mimeo available at http://www.astrotheos.com/Page5.htm .
Solar activity hazards for human health
In his studies of the influence of the solar activity upon the
terrestrial processes, Alexander Chizhevsky devoted much attention to the questions of
medical geography and epidemiology. He compared the data on the epidemics and
infectious disease outbreaks ranging from XIV century with the sunspot records.Chizhevsky considered both global and local Russian records
for cholera, typhus, anthrax, plague, diphtheria, cerebral fever, influenza,
and other diseases. He observed that the diseases intensified and the epidemics
occurred more frequently around the periods of sunspot maximums than in the
years of minimums. This led him to conclusion that the solar activity
facilitates epidemics, somehow regulating their timing and strength.
Chizhevsky considered
solar flares as a medium propagating the impact of the solar activity on earth.
The frequency of flares varies in direct proportion to the number of sunspots.
Actually, the flares occur in active regions around sunspots, where intense
magnetic fields penetrate the sun’s photosphere to link the corona to the solar
interior. The flares produce radiation across
the electromagnetic spectrum at all wavelengths, from radio waves to gamma
rays. Moreover, they can produce streams of highly energetic particles in the
solar wind, known as a solar proton event, or "coronal mass
ejection". These particles impact the earth's magnetosphere, trigger
geomagnetic storms, and present an immediate radiation hazards to spacecraft
and astronauts. Furthermore, Chizhevsky hypothesized that the solar flares can change
ionization of the earth atmosphere, which can be either positive or harmful for
humans depending on its properties.
The debates about the possible impact of conditions on the sun and
in the earth’s magnetosphere on human health at the earth’s surface have
intensified in the last decade. The available research and data confirm that
variations of geomagnetic activity can affect human cardiovascular health. The
studies suggest that geomagnetic effects are more pronounced at higher magnetic
latitudes, that extremely high as well as extremely low values of geomagnetic
activity seem to have adverse health effects, and that a subset of the
population (10–15 percent) is predisposed to adverse health due to
geomagnetic variations (Palmer et al., 2006):
A group of scientist investigated whether the
sunspot periodicity correlated with the incidence of the cervical epithelial histopathologies and human physiologic functions. From
January 1983 through December 2003, monthly averages were obtained for six
infectious, premalignant and malignant changes in the cervical epithelium from
1,182,421 consecutive screening; and six human physiologic functions of a
healthy man, which were measured about 5 times per day during about 34,500
self-measurement sessions. All six annually rhythmic infectious, premalignant
and malignant cervical epithelial pathologies showed strong 10-year cycles,
broadly matching solar cycle, as did all six self-measured physiologic
functions. The phases (maxima) for the sixhistopathologic findings and five of six physiologic
measurements were very near, or within, the first two quarters following the
cyclical solar maxima (Hrushesky et al., 2011). These findings added to the
growing evidence that solar magnetic storm periodicities are mirrored by cyclic
rhythms of similar periods in human physiology and pathophysiology (Table).
Evidence from 6 large population-based studies
in Europe and Australasia confirmed that geomagnetic storms can trigger stroke.
The authors used a time-stratified case-crossover study design to analyze
individual participant and daily geomagnetic activity (as measured by Ap
Index) data from several
large population-based stroke incidence studies (with information on 11,453
patients with stroke collected during 16,031,764 person-years of observation)
in New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, France, and Sweden conducted between
1981 and 2004. Overall, geomagnetic storms (Ap Index 60+) were associated with 19% increase in
the risk of stroke occurrence. The triggering effect of geomagnetic storms was
most evident across the combined group of all strokes in those aged less than
65 years, increasing stroke risk by more than 50%. Moderate geomagnetic storms
(60–99 Ap Index) were associated with a 27% increased risk of stroke
occurrence, strong geomagnetic storms (100–149 Ap
Index) with a 52% increased
risk, and severe/extreme geomagnetic storms (Ap Index 150+) with a 52% increased risk (Feigin et al,
2014).
Most recently, a research published in January
2015 found that the life spans of people born in Norway during a solar maximum
period were about five years shorter than those of people born in a solar
minimum period. Using data on temporal variation in sunspot numbers and
individual-based demographic data (N = 8662 births) from Norway between 1676
and 1878, while controlling for maternal effects, socioeconomic status, cohort
and ecology, the research showed that solar activity (total solar irradiance)
at birth decreased the probability of survival to adulthood for both men and
women. On average, the lifespans of individuals born in a solar maximum period
were 5.2 years shorter than those born in a solar minimum period. In addition,
fertility and lifetime reproductive success (LRS) were reduced among low-status
women born in years with high solar activity. The proximate explanation for the
relationship between solar activity and infant mortality may be an effect of folate
degradation during
pregnancy caused by ultraviolet radiation (UVR). It can suppress essential
molecular and cellular mechanisms during early development in living organisms
and variations in solar activity during early development may thus influence
their health and reproduction (Skjćrvř et al, 2015).
Tables
Literature
references
Chizhevsky, Alexander, 1938, “Les Epidemies et les
perturbations electro-magnetiques du
milieu exterieur,” — Paris, Hippocrate,
1938.
Chizhevsky, Alexander, 1976: “The Terrestrial Echo of
Solar Storms,” — (In Russian: А.Л.Чижевский. «Земное эхо солнечных
бурь.» — Москва, Издательство «Мысль»,
1976).
Feigin, Valery
L., Priya G. Parmar, Suzanne Barker-Collo, Derrick A. Bennett, Craig S. Anderson, Amanda
G. Thrift, Birgitta Stegmayr, Peter M. Rothwell, Maurice Giroud, Yannick Bejot, Phillip Carvil, Rita Krishnamurthi and Nikola Kasabov, 2014: “Geomagnetic
Storms Can Trigger Stroke: Evidence From 6 Large Population-Based Studies in
Europe and Australasia,” – Stroke,
Journal of American Heart Association, – published online April 22, 2014.
Hrushesky, William
J.M., Robert B. Sothern, Jovelyn Du-Quiton, Dinah Faith T. Quiton, Wop Rietveld, Mathilde E. Boon, 2011: “Sunspot Dynamics Are Reflected in Human Physiology and Pathophysiology,”
— ASTROBIOLOGY,
Volume 11, Number 2, 2011.
Otsu A., Chinami M., Morgenthale S., Kaneko Y., Fujita D., Shirakawa T., 2006:
“Correlations for number of sunspots, unemployment rate, and suicide
mortality in Japan.” — Percept Mot Skills, 2006 Apr;
102(2):603-8.
Palmer, S. J., M. J. Rycroft, M. Cermack, 2006: “Solar and geomagnetic activity, extremely low
frequency magnetic and electric fields and human health at the Earth's surface,”
— Surveys in Geophysics, Volume 27, Issue 5, pp.557-595.
Skjćrvř, Gine
Roll; Frode
Fossřy; Eivin Rřskaft, 2015: “Solar activity at birth predicted infant
survival and women's fertility in historical Norway,” — Proc.
R. Soc. B 2015 282 20142032; DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2014.2032. Published 7 January
2015.
Impact of uncertainty on economic conditions
Uncertainty, because it increases the value of
waiting for new information, retards the current rate of investment. The nature
of investor's optimal reactions to events whose implications are resolved over
time is a possible explanation of the instability of aggregate investment over
the business cycle (Bernanke, 1983).
Uncertainty appears to jump up after major
political shocks like the Cuban Missile crisis, the assassination of JFK, the
OPEC I oil-price shock, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This occurs because
higher uncertainty causes firms to temporarily pause their investment and
hiring. Productivity growth also falls because this pause in activity freezes
reallocation across units. In the medium term the increased volatility from the
shock induces an overshoot in output, employment, and productivity. Thus,
uncertainty shocks generate recessions and recoveries (Bloom, 2009).
Uncertainty shocks could drive business cycles (Bloom et al, 2012). First,
microeconomic uncertainty is robustly countercyclical, rising sharply during
recessions. Second, reasonably calibrated uncertainty shocks can explain drops
and rebounds in GDP of around 3 percent in a DSGE model. Third, increased
uncertainty alters the relative impact of government policies, making them
initially less effective and then subsequently more effective.
But what is the causal relationship between
uncertainty and growth? Does rising uncertainty drive recessions, or is
uncertainty just an outcome of economic slowdowns? To determine the direction
of causality, a recent study performed a simulation in which a modeled economy
undergoes shocks to business conditions, and tested the effects of these shocks
(Baker and Bloom, 2012). The authors built a panel of indicators for natural
disasters, terrorist attacks, political shocks and revolutions. They reported
that both first and second moment shocks are highly significant in driving
business cycles. Specifically, their regressions revealed that the impact of
revolutions on economic growth was particularly strong and highly statistically
significant (Table). At the same time, their results confirmed that the
economic variables cannot forecast revolutions and other factors that induce
uncertainty, which confirms their exogenous status (Table).
Tables
Economic
variables cannot forecast revolutions
Revolutions,
volatility, returns and GDP growth
Literature
references
Baker, Scott R., and Nicholas Bloom, 2012: “Does Uncertainty Reduce Growth? Using
Disasters as Natural Experiments,” — draft available at
http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/BakerBloom.pdf.
Bernanke, Ben, 1983: "Irreversibility, Uncertainty and
Cyclical Investment",
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 98, 85-106.
Bloom, Nicholas, 2009: “The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks,”
— Econometrica, 2009.
Bloom, Nicholas, Max Floetotto,
Nir Jaimovich, Itay Saporta and Stephen Terry,
2012: “Really Uncertain Business Cycles”
— mimeo available at http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/RUBC_DRAFT.pdf.
Explanation of the empirically observed impact of the solar activity
on the economy
The “physical” influence of solar activity and
“space weather” on earth and human activity has long been recognized. Modern
society depends heavily on a variety of technologies that are susceptible to
the extremes of space weather—severe disturbances of the upper atmosphere
and of the near-earth space environment that are driven by the magnetic activity
of the sun. Strong auroral currents can disrupt and
damage modern electric power grids and may contribute to the corrosion of oil
and gas pipelines. Magnetic storm-driven ionospheric
density disturbances interfere with high-frequency (HF) radio communications and
navigation signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, while polar
cap absorption (PCA) events can degrade—and, during severe events,
completely black out—HF communications along transpolar aviation routes,
requiring aircraft flying these routes to be diverted to lower latitudes.
Exposure of spacecraft to energetic particles during solar energetic particle
events and radiation belt enhancements can cause temporary operational
anomalies, damage critical electronics, degrade solar arrays, and blind optical
systems such as imagers and star trackers (National Research Council, 2008).
The effects of space weather on modern
technological systems are well documented in both the technical literature and
popular accounts.
1. Most often cited perhaps is the collapse within 90 seconds of
northeastern Canada’s Hydro-Quebec power grid during the great geomagnetic
storm of March 1989, which left millions of people without electricity for up
to 9 hours, with the damage estimates ranging widely from $4 billion to $10
billion.
2. The outage in January 1994 of two Canadian telecommunications
satellites during a period of enhanced energetic electron fluxes at
geosynchronous orbit, disrupting communications services nationwide. The first
satellite recovered in a few hours; recovery of the second satellite took 6
months and cost $50 million to $70 million.
3. The diversion of 26 United Airlines flights to non-polar or
less-than-optimum polar routes during several days of disturbed space weather
in January 2005. The flights were diverted to avoid the risk of HF radio black-
outs during PCA events. The increased flight time and extra landings and
takeoffs required by such route changes increase fuel consumption and raise
cost, while the delays disrupt connections to other flights.
4. Disabling of the Federal Aviation Administration’s recently
implemented GPS-based Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) for 30 hours during
the severe space weather events of October-November 2003.
These events exemplify the dramatic impact that
extreme space weather can have on a technology upon which modern society in all
of its manifold and interconnected activities and functions critically depends.
At the same time, the immediate economic damage produced by these events
appears miniscule compared with the overall size of the world economy.
In the second half of the XIX century, British
economist and statistician William Stanley Jevons developed the theory of solar
variation as the explanation of the period of the trade cycle (Jevons, 1875,
1878). In his own lifetime, the commercial crises had
occurred at intervals of 10-11 years (1825, 1836-39, 1847, 1857, 1866). In his paper, Jevons carried back the history
of commercial crises at 10-11 intervals almost to the beginning of the XVIII
century. He produced considerable evidence for the view that commercial crises
had occurred at intervals of about 10˝ years, which broadly matched the solar
cycle length. This" beautiful coincidence," as he called it, produced
in him an unduly strong conviction of causal nexus. He linked the crisis first
to harvests in Europe, and subsequently to Indian harvests, which, he argued,
transmitted prosperity to Europe through the greater margin of purchasing power
available to the Indian peasant to buy imported goods. But he devoted far too
little attention to the exact dating of deficient harvests in relation to the
dating of commercial crises, which was a necessary first step to tracing the
intermediate links. Thus the details of his inductive argument were flimsy, and
subsequent studies did not confirm robustness of his calculations. It is now
generally agreed that, even if a harvest period can be found associated with
the solar period or with more complex meteorological phenomena, this cannot
afford a complete explanation of the trade cycle. Nevertheless, Jevons's
notion, that meteorological phenomena play a part in harvest fluctuations and
that harvest fluctuations play a part (though more important formerly than
today) in the trade cycle, is not to be lightly dismissed (Keynes, 1936). In
his book, Russian scientist Alexander Chizhevsky provided evidence in support of the solar
variation on agricultural harvests (Chizhevsky, 1976). Chizhevsky listed the impact on harvest among about 27
series that exhibited fluctuations broadly following cyclical changes in the
solar activity. However, subsequent studies did not confirm the influence of
the solar activity on harvests (Garcia-Mata and Shaffner, 1934).
Curiously, even morning sunshine can have a
tangible impact on economy. A research examined the relation between morning
sunshine at a country’s leading stock exchange and stock returns that day at 26
stock exchanges internationally from 1982-97. It found out that the sunshine is
strongly significantly correlated with daily stock returns, and hypothesized
that the sunny weather was associated with upbeat mood on the trading floor (Hirshleiferand Shumway, 2001).
Moreover, another research documented the impact
of geomagnetic storms on daily stock market returns. The research found strong
empirical support in favor of a geomagnetic-storm effect in stock returns after
controlling for market seasonals and other environmental and behavioral factors.
Unusually high levels of geomagnetic activity have a negative, statistically
and economically significant effect on the following week’s stock returns for
all U.S. stock market indices. Finally, there is evidence of substantially
higher returns around the world during periods of quiet geomagnetic activity (Krivelyova andRobotti, 2003).
This research builds upon a large body of psychological literature that has
shown that geomagnetic storms have a profound effect on people’s moods, and, in
turn, people’s moods relate to human behavior, judgments and decisions about
risk. An important finding of this literature is that people often attribute
their feelings and emotions to the wrong source, leading to incorrect
judgments. Specifically, people affected by geomagnetic storms may be more
inclined to sell stocks on stormy days because they incorrectly attribute their
bad mood to negative economic prospects rather than bad environmental
conditions. Misattribution of mood and pessimistic choices can translate into a
relatively higher demand for riskless assets, causing the price of risky assets
to fall or to rise less quickly than otherwise.
Literature
references
Belkin,
Vladimir Alexeevich, 2017: “Oil and Solar Cycles: Statistics of Strong Ties
(1970–2016 Years),” – Chelyabinsk Humanitarian, 2017, No. 1 (38), pages
17-27.
Belkin,
Vladimir Alexeevich, 2015: “Cycles of Oil
Prices and Magnetic Storms: Mechanism and Facts of Strong Ties (1861-2015
Years),” – Chelyabinsk humanities,
2015, No. 3 (32), pages 17-31.
Belkin,
Vladimir Alexeevich, 2015: “Macroeconomic Indicators and Solar Activity Cycles:
Mechanism and Facts of Strong Ties (1867-2014 Years),” – Chelyabinsk humanities, 2015, №2 (31), pages 17-27.
Chizhevsky, Alexander, 1938, “Les Epidemies et les
perturbations electro-magnetiques du
milieu exterieur,” — Paris, Hippocrate,
1938.
Chizhevsky, Alexander, 1976: “The Terrestrial Echo of
Solar Storms,” —
(In Russian: А.Л.Чижевский. «Земное
эхо
солнечных
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