This article quantifies the effect of the 2006 food-borne illness spinach outbreak on harvested acreage for the fresh spinach market. In September 2006, fresh spinach contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 caused hundreds of consumer illnesses across the U.S. and a few deaths. The outbreak was...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/22/11.

Livestock Gross Margin insurance for dairy cattle (LGM-Dairy) is a risk management tool that can be used to insure a lower bound on a dairy producer’s gross margin. In this paper we (1) review the basic structure of LGM-Dairy (2) examine the sensitivity of Gross Margin Guarantee (GMG) and...

Previous studies have found underestimation of risk, or overconfidence, to be pervasive. In this paper, we model overconfidence as a reduction in perceived variance. We generalize the analysis of Sandmo and examine the effects of competition on firms displaying overconfidence. Cases for both...