Mr Eldar Solomon (p)

Sudden climate disasters can destabilize insurers, with knock-on effects for recovery capacity and long-term sustainability. However, tools to detect or predict such financial stress in real time are limited. We examine how extreme U.S. wildfires affect the stock returns of property-liability insurers and whether key return properties remain stable during these shocks, when uncertainty is highest. We introduce Structural Return Features (SRFs), metrics that summarize the shape of return trajectories, and develop a data-driven framework that combines SRFs with machine learning and a placebo event design. By benchmarking true wildfire windows against shifted placebo periods, we isolate event-specific patterns from calendar and market regimes. Results show that that predictive performance does not, on average, worsen during wildfire shocks. We discovered that nearly all of the strongest predictive results occur when wildfire-day price moves are among the largest gains rather than the largest losses, implying that post-shock upside moves can be more predictable than drawdowns. We also found that, across features, skewness is the most consistently predictable trait, and we observed that for a subset of patterns predictability improves during wildfire windows, indicating that shocks can induce structured dynamics rather than pure noise. These predictive signatures provide an early-warning layer for insurers and regulators by flagging conditions under which solvency pressures may intensify, supporting more pro active risk management under escalating climate extremes.

Ms Sahar Almog (p)

Despite growing scholarly attention to gastronomy as a driver of urban differentiation and regional competitiveness, sub-fields within the culinary economy remain analytically under-theorized. Mixology, in particular, has emerged as a visible component of urban cultural life, yet little is known about how its internal actor configuration shapes its regional role and capacity to operate under conditions of disruption.

This study conceptualizes mixology as a relational regional field and develops the notion of field-level stabilization as an outcome of distributed stakeholder configuration under stress. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted within Israel’s urban cocktail scene-including semi-structured interviews with bartenders, venue owners, importers, producers, and other key actors, alongside participant observation - the analysis applies Bryson’s (2004) stakeholder identification and analysis framework to systematically map influence, interests, and interdependencies within the field.

Rather than offering a purely descriptive account, the study analyzes how specific stakeholder constellations shaped responses to major external shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war. Interview evidence highlights cases in which customers initiated efforts to sustain local mixology bars, including cooperative structures and community-backed support mechanisms. Importers described investments in mentoring programs and professional competitions as ways of maintaining the broader professional ecosystem. In parallel, within wider civic and sectoral initiatives to support regional agriculture during the war, linkages between local farmers and selected cocktail bars intensified. New producer initiatives that emerged during the pandemic and wartime period further enriched the regional beverage landscape and encouraged experimentation with domestically sourced ingredients - particularly citrus varieties. These developments did not replace global supply chains, but they expanded local circulation channels and strengthened connections between urban establishments and regional producers.

These patterns indicate that stabilization was not centralized but emerged from horizontal coordination across consumption, distribution, and production layers. The study challenges resilience accounts that privilege formal institutions, demonstrating instead how informal relational architectures within cultural economies generate adaptive capacity. While grounded in Israel’s urban cocktail scene, the analysis offers a broader lens on how niche cultural economies contribute to regional stabilization under prolonged disruption. By identifying how inter-actor configurations shape economic continuity and local embeddedness, the paper contributes to debates on sustainable regional economies and the micro-foundations of resilience in urban systems.

Ms Miriam Merav Tourgeman (p), Dr Chen Cohen, Dr. Enav Fridman, Ms. Lilah Rinot Levavi

Strategizing for Sustainability: Cognitive Architecture and Regional Governance in Voluntary Renewable Energy Participation
The global transition to renewable energy increasingly depends on voluntary citizen participation within regionally structured energy systems. While renewable capacity has expanded worldwide, sustained regional deployment requires not only infrastructure investment but also effective behavioral governance mechanisms. Voluntary green electricity programs represent one such policy instrument, yet participation rates remain persistently modest across jurisdictions.
This study uses the United States, and specifically Texas, as a regulatory case study that provides an empirical platform for advancing theoretical insights into regional renewable energy governance. Texas constitutes a distinct institutional context of electricity market liberalization and decentralized energy governance, characterized by regulatory heterogeneity, retail competition, and the coexistence of voluntary green pricing schemes within a single regional energy system. This institutional structure enables a systematic examination of how regional regulatory design and market differentiation shape the interaction between citizen cognition and renewable energy adoption.
Building on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the model distinguishes between Environmental Knowledge (EK), conceptualized as abstract environmental literacy, and Green Pricing Program Knowledge (GPPK), defined as institutional operational knowledge regarding program design, enrollment procedures, and pricing structures. Structural Equation Modeling indicates that environmental knowledge strengthens attitudes and norms but operates indirectly. In contrast, program specific knowledge substantially enhances perceived behavioral control, which emerges as the strongest direct predictor of renewable electricity purchasing behavior.
The study contributes by advancing a cognitive institutional explanation of voluntary renewable energy participation within regional governance systems. It shows that barriers to adoption do not primarily stem from a lack of environmental commitment, but from a gap between institutional design and the way citizens perceive their ability to act within it. The findings reposition decentralized renewable energy development as a governance design challenge and emphasize that institutional clarity constitutes a central enabling condition for behavioral activation. By integrating behavioral theory with regional energy governance, the study offers a structured framework explaining when and how decentralized systems succeed in facilitating renewable energy adoption.

Mr Matan Shitrit (p)

The global shift toward decentralized renewable energy is expanding the role of energy communities from passive consumers to active stakeholders. Yet local initiatives often fail even when technologies are feasible, because adoption depends on coordination under conditions shaped by culture, trust, and institutional fit. This study develops an analytical framework explaining how structural, cultural, and institutional conditions shape coordination incentives and collective adoption of decentralized microgrids. Using a mixed methods design that integrates qualitative fieldwork, techno economic modeling, and game theoretic analysis, we examine an empirically informative case of approximately 65,000 households in dense urban neighborhoods that rely on unregulated diesel generators for electricity on Sabbaths and religious festivals. This practice deepens energy poverty and generates over 136,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.

We conducted 23 semi structured interviews with stakeholders from government, local authorities, academia, and the energy sector, alongside four focus groups with Ultra Orthodox heads of household. Thematic analysis identifies three binding conditions for adoption: affordability, perceived safety, and alignment with community norms and internal authority structures. These recurrent themes are operationalized into an asymmetric simultaneous coordination game capturing strategic interactions among households, local authorities, and national institutions. The model admits two equilibria: a non cooperative status quo characterized by fragmented incentives and persistent generator reliance, and a Pareto superior cooperative transition supported by affordability thresholds, cultural legitimacy, and trusted intermediaries. Techno economic estimates show that storage based electricity can substantially reduce the effective cost relative to generator supply, with implications for lowering the share of household income devoted to energy and reducing energy poverty in low income deciles.

By translating empirically grounded social mechanisms into explicit participation constraints and equilibrium conditions, the study offers a transferable socio strategic lens for analyzing decentralized transitions in culturally cohesive and weakly regulated settings, and for designing locally anchored policy interventions that enable just and inclusive energy transitions.

Keywords: renewable energy, microgrid, coordination game, energy affordability, decentralized energy systems, energy poverty

Mr Itay Dabush (p), Dr Chen Cohen

The accelerating transition toward battery electric vehicles (BEVs) supports global decarbonization goals but simultaneously erodes the fuel-tax revenues that traditionally finance road infrastructure. As governments seek long-term alternatives, mileage-based user fees (MUFs) are increasingly considered a viable replacement. However, MUFs are not technologically neutral: their impacts depend strongly on regulatory timing and on whether plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are present in the fleet. Because PHEVs respond differently to cost signals and may substitute for BEVs under higher per-kilometer charges, their presence can reshape both environmental outcomes and the fiscal base from which MUF revenues are collected.
This study develops a large-scale agent-based model (ABM) calibrated to U.S. market conditions to examine the joint effects of BEV subsidies and MUFs across different stages of electrification. The model simulates heterogeneous consumers choosing among BEVs, PHEVs, and conventional vehicles (CVs); infrastructure investors adapting between gasoline and charging stations via evolutionary learning on a small-world network; and a government applying two subsidy structures (five-year unlimited vs. ten-year gradually declining) and introducing an MUF either early (at 30% BEV penetration) or later (after BEVs exceed 50%). Policy outcomes are evaluated using complementary environmental and fiscal indicators, including an emission-retention measure that captures how much of the subsidy-induced emission reduction persists once an MUF is added, and a fiscal-recovery rate quantifying the share of subsidy expenditures recouped through MUF revenues. A PHEV mediation index isolates how PHEVs alter the effectiveness of the combined policy package.
Results reveal a clear timing, composition trade-off. Early MUF implementation strengthens fiscal recovery, often achieving full or near-full subsidy repayment at moderate MUF levels—but at the cost of weaker environmental performance in mixed fleets, where higher BEV operating costs slow BEV adoption and induce substitution toward PHEVs. Delayed MUF introduction, in contrast, preserves BEV diffusion and maintains high emission reductions, but generates slower and less complete fiscal recovery because PHEVs dilute the taxable mileage base. Across scenarios, PHEVs consistently weaken fiscal recovery yet help moderate environmental losses only when MUFs are introduced early.
Overall, the findings show that effective road-finance reform must explicitly account for technological composition and regulatory timing. MUFs introduced before BEVs reach market maturity risk locking consumers into hybrid-dominated equilibria, whereas MUFs introduced later can stabilize revenues with minimal disruption, highlighting the need for coordinated design of subsidy structures and distance-based pricing.