The study develops the methodology for a copula-based weather index insurance rating. As the copula approach is better suited for modeling tail dependence than the standard linear correlation method, we suppose that copulas are more adequate for pricing a weather index insurance contract against...

Risk plays an important role in agricultural decision-making, particularly in those regions that are remarkably exposed to natural hazards and underdeveloped input and output markets. This is especially true for crop production in CIS countries where many farms have to deal with low liquidity...

This study investigates production risk and technical inefficiency as two possible sources of the production variability that characterised Russian agriculture during the last decade. The empirical analysis is conducted using panel data from 1996 to 2001 on 443 large agricultural enterprises...

This article analyses determinants of the investment behaviour of Russian farms during the period of economic stabilisation after the 1998 financial crisis. We argue that the performance and investment activity of Russian farms are significantly affected not only by the macroeconomic and...

Limited budget for the purchase of variable inputs might adversely affect producer's input use decisions and might result in a non-optimal input usage. If expenditure constrains are present and binding, unconstrained profit-maximization is not valid for modelling producers' input use decisions....

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of possible causes of considerable production variability that characterised Russian agriculture during the last decade. The study investigates production risk and technical inefficiency as two sources that influence production variability....

We analyse area yield insurance contracts and weather index insurance contracts in terms of risk reduction for wheat farms in Kazakhstan over the period 1980-2002. We combine the common mean-variance approach with a stochastic dominance approach to ensure the consistency of the empirical results...

Comparing different organizational, managerial and economic indicators of the farms in two selected regions the study investigates whether agroholdings perform better and thus can be regarded as a promising organizational model for Russian agriculture. A comparatively poor performance of...

This discussion paper considers insurance as a possible instrument of farm income stabilization and compares several crop insurance products with respect to their applicability in a transition economy using the case of Kazakhstan. The analysis is based on a qualitative evaluation as well a...