Government regulation of agricultural markets sometimes provides incentives that conflict with the government policy objectives. This paper is based on the 1984/85 grain market situation in Senegal. It discusses the potential impacts of regulatory uncertainty on activities of different market...

Combining risk programming with biophysical simulation offers potential benefits for helping farmers in developing countries choose cropping and irrigation strategies or for the study of farmer behaviour. Risk can have a significant impact on the way resources are allocated and should therefore...

Cropping pattern in the Himalayan region of India has undergone a significant change in the recent past. Introduction of horticultural crops of vegetables, fruits and flowers have led to more intensive agriculture. Such a change, resulting in higher incomes and improvements of the overall living...

Transgenic pest-resistant varieties are hypothesized to reduce farmers’ demand for on-farm diversity through an act of substitution, as both serve as production risk reducing instruments. This adverse agro-biodiversity impact of technology adoption might be partially counteracted by an...

Systemic weather risk is a major obstacle for the formation of private (nonsubsidized) crop insurance. This paper explores the possibility of spatial diversification of insurance by estimating the joint occurrence of unfavorable weather conditions in different locations. For that purpose copula...

In this paper we specify and estimate producers’ risk preference using farm data. We allow heterogeneous risk preference across individuals and propose a specification to model the heterogeneity. We base farmers’ decision making on a utility maximization framework and incorporate both market...

This paper investigates the effects of network based individual social capital on the access of rural households to services. In the context of development economics, an innovative data collection approach is used to determine network based social capital. The approach originates from the field...

There is growing concern about the impact of climate change on agriculture and the potential need for better risk management instruments that respond to a more risky environment. This is based on the widespread assumption that climate change will increase weather and yield variability and will...

This paper describes farmer’s exposures to risks at the individual farm level and develops a model representing the decisions of an individual risk averse farmer facing variability in both prices and yields. A set of stylised risk market instruments is represented. The model is calibrated...

This paper addresses the question of summer cover crop adoption by farmers in presence of a risk of yield loss due to take-all disease and climate variability. To analyse the public incentives needed to encourage farmers to adopt summer cover crops as a means of reducing N leaching, we combine...