The objective of this paper is to compare the accuracy of crop insurance rating methods based on historical liability and indemnity data (similar to the procedure currently used by the Risk Management Agency) and “yield distribution” approaches. Estimated rates are compared to “true”...

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...

Xi Chen acknowledges generous Doctoral Research Grant from the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell University and precious data set provided by the Development Strategy and Governance Division at IFPRI. Conference Travel Grant provided by the Department of Applied Economics and...

This paper employs a cost function analysis method to investigate the existence of moral hazard in cotton buy-up insurance. The trans-log cost function estimates of the own-price elasticity of fertilizer, herbicide, and insecticide is -0.222, -0.143, and -0.121, respectively for Mississippi...

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...

Crop producers have numerous marketing and risk management tools available. Research relating producers’ risk attitudes to their use of these tools has produced mixed results, and most studies focus on individual tools to the neglect of complementarities among them. Hence, little is known...

Our paper looks at how price volatility in the Brazilian ethanol industry changes over time and across markets by using a new methodological approach suggested by Seo (2007). The main advantage of Seo’s proposal over previously existing methods is that it allows to jointly estimate the...

The study addresses problems in measuring credit risk under the structure model, and then proposes a seemingly unrelated regression model (SUR) to predict farms’ ability in meeting their current and anticipated obligations in the next 12 months. The empirical model accounts for both the...