This paper shows how agent-based stochastic approaches can provide a complementary and more flexible approach to study investment incentives and price dynamics in a real options framework. We particularly study the case of two-stage production chains in which one sector produces an intermediate...

Empirical applications of real options models in competitive environments implicitly exploit the optimality of myopic planning. In a seminal paper [Leahy, J.V., 1993. Investment in Competitive Equilibrium: the Optimality of Myopic Behavior. Quarterly Journal of Economics 108, 1105–1133] shows...

The present dissertation is twofold and takes up several issues in two separate and independent articles. In chapter II, the hedging effectiveness of weather index-based insurance with regard to aggregation biases in the underlying risk exposure of aggregated yield time series is presented. The...

The first paper of this dissertation in Chapter II, “Insurance for Technology Adoption: An Experimental Evaluation of Schemes and Subsidies with Maize Farmers in Mexico”, analyzes experimentally how bundling the purchase of a risky technology, namely a higher yielding maize seed variety,...

Die Landwirtschaft steht derzeit unter der besonderen Herausforderung, sich zugleich einer wachsenden gesellschaftlichen Kritik an modernen, zunehmend großbetrieblichen Produktionsweisen zu stellen als auch die Möglichkeiten weiteren technologischen Fortschritts zu realisieren, um im...

German agriculture exhibits persistent income problems. While larger farms are on average quite profitable, this is consistently not true for the majority of part-time and small- and medium-sized family farms. These farms are particularly prominent in the southern and western parts of Germany...