Purpose: Adoption rates of commodity futures contracts among farmers are rather low in Europe despite their political support. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) can contribute to the understanding of farmers’ intention to use commodity...

Purpose: The expected increase in milk price volatility after the milk quota abolition in the EU will lead to further planning uncertainty on dairy farms. Consequently, the modest supply of insurance and the hedging of milk prices through futures may increase. To shed more light on this...

Purpose: Although the microfinance sector in developing countries has seen an impressive development in recent years, many small-scale farmers in rural areas are still undersupplied with capital. One of the main reasons for this undercapitalization is the exposure to weather risks. Weather...

Purpose: The outstanding reform of the Common Agriculture Policy allows for changes regarding its most criticized component, the direct payment scheme. The purpose of this paper is to investigate farmers’ acceptance of subsidized whole farm income insurance (WFI) and single-crop, multi-peril...

Purpose: In recent years, the application of credit scoring in urban microfinance institutions (MFIs) became popular, while rural MFIs, which mainly lend to agricultural clients, are hesitating to adopt credit scoring. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether microfinance credit scoring...

Purpose: With exclusive data from a commercial microfinance institution (MFI) in Madagascar, the purpose of this paper is to investigate if loan officer rotation (change of loan officer) has an effect on credit access (loan approval) in rural and in urban areas. The authors further analyze how...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which individual risk attitude determines a Cambodian smallholder's choice between a commercial informal loan and a credit from a licensed microfinance institution. Design/methodology/approach: The paper analyzes a sample of...

Purpose: Urbanization is a main driver of the transformation from agricultural-based economies to service-based economies. At the same time, urbanization might also alter preferences and attitudes such as risk and time preferences that contribute to economic growth and foster this transition....

Purpose: Satellite-based weather index insurance has recently been considered in order to reduce the high basis risk of station-based weather index insurance. However, the use of satellite data with a relatively low spatial resolution has not yet made it possible to determine the satellite...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the extent to which weather index-based insurances can contribute to reducing shortfall risks of revenues of a representative average farm that produces corn or wheat in the North China Plain (NCP). The geographical basis risk is quantified to...