The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the European regional development funds do not allow simultaneous achievement of goals of efficiency and equity when they are dedicated to financing transportation infrastructures. The paper first gives some insights on the origin of regional...

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the European regional development funds do not allow simultaneous achievement of goals of efficiency and equity when they are dedicated to financing transportation infrastructures. The paper first gives some insights on the history and the...

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of structural funds on the convergence process of 145 European regions over 1989-1999. With the aim or enhancing cohesion, these funds are primarily allocated to the least developed regions. The most important part of these funds is devoted to...

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of structural funds on the convergence process of 145 European regions over 1989-1999. With the aim or enhancing cohesion, these funds are primarily allocated to the least developed regions. The most important part of these funds is devoted to...

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...

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,...

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...

Crop insurance performance and loss rates depend directly on underlying crop yield distributions. However, there still exists much debate about how to represent the underlying crop yield distributions. Using farm-level corn and soybean yields from 1972-2008, this study examines in-sample...