This study develops a multi-crop insurance model which is employed to evaluate crop insurance decisions when several crops are produced jointly. The results suggest that the diversification effects derived from producing multiple crops can substantially alter the risk reduction impacts of crop...

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

The authors develop a multicrop insurance model to evaluate crop insurance decisions when several crops are produced. The results suggest that the diversification effects derived from producing multiple crops can substantially alter the risk-reduction impacts of crop insurance versus if the...

Can the availability of poorly-designed government insurance alter technology adoption decisions? A theoretical model of technology adoption and insurance incentive effects for a high- and low-risk technology is developed and explored empirically using a unique dataset of skip-row agronomic...

A critical issue in identifying an appropriate characterization of crop yield distributions is that the best-fitting distribution in an in-sample framework is not necessarily the best choice out-of-sample. This study provides a methodology for estimating flexible and efficient mixture models...

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

Considerable disagreement exists about the most appropriate characterization of farm-level yield distributions. Yet, the economic importance of alternate yield distribution specifications on insurance valuation, product designs and farm-level risk management has not been investigated or...

This research examines risk-return tradeoffs across a full range of crop insurance products and coverage levels. Results indicate that farm-level products reduce risk for low probability events, but that risk reductions often are not large for events that occur with more regularity. Risk...

The purpose of this research report is to summarize the features of several types of "new generation" grain marketing contracts. Over the last several years, new types of grain marketing contracts have been developed by the grain industry in an attempt to improve the results of the marketing...