Cash and futures prices should reach equality, or converge, upon contract maturity. Traders can impose convergence during the delivery month through arbitrage behavior: either making or taking delivery on futures contracts. If convergence is not predictable, a futures market fails to provide a...

Replaced with revised version of poster 08/03/10.

Crude oil price speculation during 2000s could have increased installed capacity in corn ethanol plants beyond what was warranted by the market factors. We use Muth’s commodity pricing model and Flood and Garber’s tests to test for speculative investment in US corn ethanol industry. The...

This study examines the financial performance and stress experienced by beginning farmers in the U.S. Using the USDA’s ARMS data, probit models are estimated to study the personal and farm characteristics that affect whether or not the financial ratios fall into critical zones. The results...

This paper employs mean-variance and mean-skewness optimization to investigate farmers’ crop choices under Gross Revenue Insurance (GRIP), Whole Farm Income Insurance, the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program, and its modified 2008 program AgrInvest. To our knowledge this paper...

Rankings of different risk management portfolios including Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE), traditional government payment programs, crop insurance and hedging in futures; and optimal choices of insurance coverage levels and hedge ratios are evaluated for a representative central Indiana...

This study examines the financial feasibility of producing ethanol biofuel from sugar beets in central North Dakota. Under the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, biofuel from sugar beets uniquely qualifies as an “advanced biofuel”. EISA mandates production of 15 billion...

The farm household structure is a complex set of inter-relationships between and among a variety of internal and external factors involving consumption, investment, and income-earning activities. In this paper we use ARMS data to explore the contribution of off-farm income to the viability of...

This study examines the determinants of income diversification of farm households in the United States. Farm households allocate their time between farm and off-farm activities to help stabilized household income (consumption). What characterizes those households who engage in off-farm...

Chinese rural household has been always facing credit constraints. Few institutions lend loans to farmers because of financial risks. Farmers have to use usury or other informal sources to meet the financial needs for production. This credit constraint has been forcing farmers to deviate from...