This study examines the actuarial implications of the loss cost ratio (LCR) ratemakingmethodology employed by the Risk Management Agency as a component of base ratesfor U.S. crop insurance programs, and identifies specific conditions required for the LCRmethodology to result in unbiased rates...

Generated crop insurance rates depend critically on the distributional assumptions of theunderlying crop yield loss model. Using farm level corn yield data from 1972-2008, we revisitthe problem of examining in-sample goodness-of-fit measures across a set of flexibleparametric, semi-parametric,...

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine further the factors that influencefarmers’ decisions to participate in crop insurance programs. The factors consideredare RMA rules and farmers’ yield perceptions. In particular, the first paperexamined the role of Risk Management Agency’s...

This paper examines the optimal allocation of several inputs in the context of seawater desalination by reverse osmosis (RO) as a source of municipal (or commercial or industrial) water. A cost-minimization model is developed, a production function is estimated, and sensitivity analyses are...

An important issue in the agricultural actuarial literature is the extent to which sample period selection affects the accuracy of insurance rating. A conditional Weibull distribution approach is developed which explicitly models the interaction of weather, technology, and other variables...

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...

The study measures farm credit risk by using farm records collected by Farm Business Farm Management (FBFM) during the period 1995-2004. The study addresses the following questions: 1) whether farm’s financial position is fully described by the structure model, 2) what are the determinants of...

This study examines the impact of farmland investments on the risk-efficiency of mixed asset portfolios. Traditional asset classes considered available for investment include various equity market indices, commercial REITs, corporate bonds of investment- and sub investment grade, government...

Options with different maturities can be used to generate volatility estimates for non-overlapping future time intervals. This paper develops the term structure of volatility implied by corn futures options, and evaluates the informational content of the implied forward volatility as a predictor...

Factors affecting the adoption of crop insurance, forward contracting, and spreading sales areanalyzed using multivariate and multinomial probit approaches that account for simultaneousadoption and/or correlation among the three risk management adoption decisions. Our empiricalresults suggest...