Many food traits desired by consumers are costly to provide and difficult to verify. A complicating factor is that delivered quality can only be affected stochastically by producers and imperfectly observed by consumers. Markets for these goods will emerge only if supplying firms can be trusted....

Many food traits desired by consumers are costly to provide and difficult to verify. A complicating factor is that delivered quality can only be affected stochastically by producers and imperfectly observed by consumers. Markets for these goods will emerge only if supplying firms can be trusted....

Increased availability and demand for low-deductible crop insurance policies have increased focus on crop insurance rating methods. Actuarial fairness cannot be achieved if constant multiplicative factors are used to determine how premiums change as coverage levels increase. A comparison of...

Increased availability and demand for low-deductible crop insurance policies have increased focus on crop insurance rating methods. Actuarial fairness cannot be achieved if constant multiplicative factors are used to determine how premiums change as coverage levels increase. A comparison of...

Futures markets on agricultural commodities typically trade with maximum maturity dates of less than four years. If these markets did trade with maturities eight or ten years distant, futures prices would have value as price forecasts and as a way to structure long-term swaps and insurance...

Two prominent features of recent changes in agriculture have been the advent of precision breeding techniques and an increase in the level of information netputs in production. This article identifies ways in which these features may complement in expanding the variety of processed products,...

We develop a conceptual model to study the impact of mandate policies on stimulating investment in cellulosic biofuel refineries. In a two-period framework, we compare the first-period investment level (FIL) under three scenarios: laissez-faire, non-waivable mandate (NWM) policy, and waivable...

The magnitude of land conversion caused by biofuels expansion largely determines whether biofuels reduce net greenhouse gas emissions. To examine this issue, we model how equilibrium changes in input use and land allocation decisions respond to market- and policy-induced increases in corn...