This report updates the findings in Du and Hayes 2009 by extending the data to December 2010 and concludes that over the sample period from January 2000 to December 2010, the growth in ethanol production reduced wholesale gasoline prices by $0.25 per gallon on average. The Midwest region...

Strong demand for agricultural commodities, high crop prices and pressure to reduce government budget deficits heighten the need for land retirement programs to be designed to maximize environmental benefits for any given budget outlay. The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the largest land...

The U.S. crop insurance market has several features that set it apart from other insurance markets. These include:(a) explicit government subsidies with an average premium subsidy rate of about 60% in recent years; and (b) the legislative requirement that premium rates be set at actuarially fair...

We update the findings of the impact of ethanol production on U.S. and regional gasoline markets as reported previously in Du and Hayes (2009 and 2011), by extending the data to December 2011. The results indicate that over the period of January 2000 to December 2011, the growth in ethanol...

Rate setting procedures for United States crop yield and revenue insurance contracts employ methods that presume correlations to be state invariant. Whether this is true matters. If yield-yield correlations strengthen when crops are subject to widespread stress, then diversification...

This paper assesses the roles of various factors influencing the volatility of crude oil prices and the possible linkage between this volatility and agricultural commodity markets. Stochastic volatility models are applied to weekly crude oil, corn, and wheat futures prices from November 1998 to...

This study examines the world market impact of an expansion in the biofuel sector in the European Union with particular focus on indirect land-use impacts. In the first scenario, an increase of 1 million tonnes oil equivalent (Mtoe) of wheat ethanol use in the European Union expands world land...

We present a global agricultural greenhouse gas model that assesses emissions from land-use change. In addition to evaluating shifts in and out of crop production, we develop a pasture model to assess extensification and intensification of global livestock production based on herd size and...

We use Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to investigate the linkage between the volatility of ethanol security prices and the uncertainty surrounding the profitability of ethanol production and the price variations of non-ethanol energy securities. The joint evolution of return and...

While controversy surrounds skewness attributes of typical yield distributions, a better understanding is important for agricultural policy assessment and for crop insurance rate setting. Day (1965) conjectured that crop yield skewness declines with an increase in low levels of nitrogen use, but...