Crop insurance is widely used on major crops raised in the Northern Plains. Prospective reductions in the crop insurance premium subsidy are commonly expected to result in lower use of insurance. Corn and soybean producers in South Dakota responded to the shift in subsidy levels beginning in...

Value-at-risk (VaR) is increasingly being applied to problems in agriculture, especially valuation of crop insurance and agricultural lending risk exposure. VaR conveys the probability that losses exceeding a threshold will likely occur within a specified timeframe. However, it does not provide...

Crude oil price speculation during 2000s could have increased installed capacity in corn ethanol plants beyond what was warranted by the market factors. We use Muth’s commodity pricing model and Flood and Garber’s tests to test for speculative investment in US corn ethanol industry. The...

Results from a stratified, random, cross-sectional mail survey of 272 North Dakota agribusinesses found limited evidence of external credit rationing. Only 8 percent of the firms would be willing to pay a premium for additional financing. Consequently, credit rationing that did exist was...

Off-farm financial investments, such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and certificates of deposit, can offer farmers significant opportunities for diversification. Moreover, deregulation of financial markets in the 1980s enhanced the ability of farmers to invest in these financial assets. This...

Rabobankâs offer to purchase Farm Credit Services of America (FCSA) for $600 million was a surprise because few people ever envisioned 1) fragmentation of the Farm Credit System and/or 2) a foreign lender gaining large market share of U.S. agricultural financial markets. Although FCSA has...

Rabobankâs offer to purchase Farm Credit Services of America (FCSA) for $600 million was a surprise because few people ever envisioned 1) fragmentation of the Farm Credit System and/or 2) a foreign lender gaining large market share of U.S. agricultural financial markets. Although FCSA has...

Malt barley is an important specialty crop in the Northern Plains and growers mitigate risk with federally subsidized crop insurance and production contracts. However, growers face considerable risk due to "coverage gaps" in crop insurance that result in uncertain indemnity payments due to...

A random utility discrete choice experiments is used to determine farmers' preferences for health insurance, crop insurance, and a product that switches some portion of crop insurance subsidy to health insurance premium subsidy with access to large-pool risk groups.