The commodity bull cycle of 2006-2008 and subsequent dramatic price decline have been asource of hardship for traditional commodity market participants such as producers andmerchant/shippers. The usefulness of futures markets has been called into question, especiallygiven that some market...

The commodity bull cycle of 2006-2008 and subsequent dramatic price decline have been a source of hardship for traditional commodity market participants such as producers and merchant/shippers. The usefulness of futures markets has been called into question, especially given that some market...

Government farm support programs such as Loan Deficiency Payments (LDP) and Counter-Cyclical Payments (CCP) have payoff structures that effectively make them costless price insurance instruments. A combination of these payments with yield insurance may provide a viable alternative to revenue...

This paper analyzes the effect of the ACRE program adopted in the final version of the 2007 Farm Bill on the risk-reducing effectiveness of insurance products. To the best of our knowledge this is a first attempt to analyze the effect of the ACRE program on the risk management decisions of crop...

Traffic flows in the U.S. have been affected by the substantial increase and, as of January 2009, decrease in biofuel production and use. This paper considers a framework to study the effect on grain transportation flows of the 2005 Energy Act and subsequent legislation, which mandated higher...