The inaccuracy of the Black-Scholes formula arises from two aspects: the formula is for European options while most real option contracts are American; the formula is based on the assumption that underlying asset prices follow a lognormal distribution while in the real world asset prices cannot...

It is well documented that ‘‘unanticipated’’ information contained in United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) crop reports induces large price reactions in corn and soybean markets. Thus, a natural question that arises from this literature is: To what extent are futures hedges...

Agricultural firms that use Value at Risk (VaR) tend to be the large diversified corporations. The benefits of VaR in the agricultural industry are not limited to large conglomerates; however, and this study provides empirical examples of how mid to large sized commodity end-users can use VaR to...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a specific test of Boucher, Carter et al.(2008) framework on risk rationing. The data were collected through a survey of 730farm households in Shaanxi province conducted in November 2010. We comparefactor associated with risk rationed, quantity rationed...

We theoretically examine a farmer’s coverage demand with area and individual insurance plans as either separate or integrated options. The individual and area losses are assumed to be imperfectly and positively correlated. With actuarially fair rates, the farmer will fully insure with the...

The typical model of retail pricing for produce products assumes retailers set price equal to the farm price plus a certain markup. However, observations from scanner data indicate a large degree of price dispersion in the grocery retailing market. In addition to markup pricing behavior, we...

Basis risk has been cited as a primary concern for implementing weather hedges. This studyinvestigates several dimensions of weather basis risk for the U.S. corn market at variouslevels of aggregation. The results suggest that while the degree of geographic basis risk maybe significant in some...

To many people, futures trading is a little understood and rather suspicious activity. The word most often associated with this trading is "speculation", the idea being that most of those involved in futures markets are gamblers in a high stakes game seeking profit at the expense of those...

This paper is Selected for presentation at the Southern Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, January 31-February 3, 2009. The research is partially funded by ERS/USDA China Project and Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province in China. The authors are grateful for...

An experiment was conducted to investigate the interaction between consumers’ past eating behaviors, risk perceptions and future information processing procedure. In the study, participants were required to choose whether or not to eat chicken that was potentially be tainted with Avian...