The paper develops and illustrates the application of criteria for ranking risky investment alternatives that are based on their certainly equivalent (cE) outcomes and determines expressions for approximating the cE outcomes by means of the central moments of their distribution. The paper...

This paper develops a theory of the family farm in conditions of uncertainty where attention is focussed on the labour-input decisions. Specifically, the farm family is faced with two labour decisions, namely with respect to hired labour and to family labour. The framework for analysis is...

The objectives of this paper are to incorporate a measure of risk aversion in the translog frontier cost function to estimate cost inefficiency. Risk-averse behaviour of farmers is hypothesised to reduce efficiency by leading to a situation in which the marginal value product of an input is less...

In applications of expected utility analysis, researchers are confronted with a choice among several utility functional forms. Subjective utility values and probability distributions for price and yield were elicited from Sri Lankan producers of minor export crops. Exponential quadratic and...

A risk management model based on portfolio theory which accounts jointly for price, quantity, interest rate and exchange rate risks is developed and applied to cocoa and coffee production and exports in the Ivory Coast. Utilizing commodity and financial futures markets jointly, the results show...

Risk-taking preferences were elicited from small semi-commercial farmers in Northern Thailand using an experimental procedure that included real manetar:; payoffs of meaningful magnitudes. A total of five sets of lotteries with increasing payoffs were offered. The farmers were found to be risk...

The paper mustrates the scope for enhancing the conceptual apparatus used by agricultural economists to analyse decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. Selected empirical results from experiments on student subjects from three universities are reported. Three issues are considered....

We examine the relative influence of preferences and technology on producers' ex ante willingness to pay for a reduction in production risk. A risk averse producer pays both an Arrow-Pratt risk premium to stabilize income and a 'production premium' to stabilize yield. Using soil-nitrate risks as...

Theoretical and applied literature on risk in decision making for agricultural pest control is reviewed. Risk can affect pesticide decision making either because of risk aversion or because of its influence on expected profit. It is concluded that risk does not necessarily lead to increased...

In this paper the impact of price risk on millet production in Niger is investigated. The hypothesis that farmers respond to output price risk is tested. The results indicate that millet acreage planted decreased when millet price risk increased or when price risk of the competing crop decreased...