The research addresses the economic problem of deforestation. A contributing factor to deforestation is coffee production. Coffee is an indigenous plant that is naturally occurring in the native tropical forests. However, conventional coffee is grown on cleared forest soil. In the native forest...

Our previous research found that FMD Outbreaks in foreign countries have a significant positive influence on U.S. swine meat exports. However, not all of these FMD-affected countries adopted the same treatment policy to ease domestic FMD issues. This study proposes a gravity model with...

This study examines the role of price competitiveness and foreign activity in Ghana’s export performance. Using an augmented VAR model in conjunction with modified Wald tests, causal relationships are tested between real effective exchange rates, foreign GDP and both total and agricultural...

This paper is Selected for presentation at the Southern Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, January 31-February 3, 2009. The research is partially funded by ERS/USDA China Project and Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province in China. The authors are grateful for...

The 2002 Farm Bill altered the peanut program. Peanut producers have indicated interest in a New Generation Shelling Cooperative (NGSC). This study simulates inherent risks and potential risk management strategies for a NGSC. These strategies are ranked using various metrics to understand their...

Index crop insurance products can eliminate the asymmetric information problem inherent in farm-level multiple peril crop insurance. Purchasers of index insurance products are, however, exposed to basis risk. This study examines the feasibility of various index insurance products for corn farms...

An alternative unconstrained expected-utility maximization model of farm debt is developed using the location-scale parameter condition that incorporates the empirically validated hypotheses of decreasing absolute and constant relative risk aversion. Simulation-optimization results based on the...

Replaced with revised version of paper 01/29/04.

This paper provides a theoretical analysis for the optimal portfolio of weather index and individual crop insurance in farm level under mean-variance framework and stresses the impacts of risk aversion level, transaction cost, and basis risk. An empirical application of corn farms in Todd county...