Risk reduction and transaction costs are often used to explain contracting in the U.S. hog industry with little empirical support. Using a unified conceptual framework that draws from risk behavior and transaction cost theories, in combination with unique survey and accounting data, we...

Field experiment and household survey data are combined to investigate whether working in a risky occupation such as fishing makes fishermen have different risk preferences than individuals in other occupations. Prospect theory is utilized as the main analytical framework and a structural model...

A method is suggested for modeling uncertainty when there is a lack of information concerning the effect of forest management decisions on tree growth. Dynamic programming is used to investigate the optimality of alternative management strategies. The model is illustrated with an empirical...

Government programs that help agricultural producers manage risk may have environmental consequences. In recent years, premium subsidies for crop insurance have been increased substantially to encourage greater producer participation. Using detailed, producer-level crop insurance contract data...

This article extends the literature on economic valuation of public interventions that reduce environmental risk. We consider the case where risk-reducing interventions have different characteristics than the risk proxies used in hedonic regressions. We then demonstrate the importance of these...

A watershed-based modeling system is developed to assess alternative nutrient abatement policies, including fertilizer taxes, application caps, and uniform reductions. A microeconometric model of nutrient use is estimated using farm-level data, prices, and spatially detailed soil and land...

Irrigation water demand is estimated using field-level panel data from Kansas over 16 years. The cost of pumping varies over time due to changes in energy prices and across space due to differences in the depth to water. Exploiting this variation allows us to estimate the demand elasticity while...

This paper investigates factors that impact marketing performance in the Canadian wheat market. Using data provided by the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) for six crop years, results indicate that producers were not able to profitably use all marketing contracts offered by the CWB, earlier pricing...

Futures markets have two main goals: price discovery and risk management. Because management decisions often have to be made on a time horizon longer than the time until expiration of the nearby futures contract, it is important to determine how well distant-delivery futures contracts are able...

This article reviews actuarial procedures used to calculate premium rates in the federal crop insurance program. Average yields are used as an important indicator of risk under current rating practices. The strength and validity of this relationship is examined using historical yield data drawn...