We theoretically examine a farmer’s coverage demand with area and individual insurance plans as either separate or integrated options. The individual and area losses are assumed to be imperfectly and positively correlated. With actuarially fair rates, the farmer will fully insure with the...

Commodity and energy prices have exhibited an unprecedented increase between October 2006 and July 2008, only to fall sharply during the last months of 2008. Many explanations have been offered to this phenomenon, including steadily increasing demand from China and India, large mandated...

This paper explores two ideas to enhance the performance of agri-environmental contracting schemes: linking contract payments to environmental outcomes and putting the contracts up for tender. This paper investigates whether there are any gains to be had by combining the benefits of both...

Recently gravity trade models are applied to disaggregated trade data. Here many zeros arecharacteristic. In the presence of excess zeros usual Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood(PPML) is still consistent, the variance covariance matrix however is invalid. Correcteconomic interpretation however...

We study the difference in the volatility dynamics of CBOT corn, soybeans, and oatsfutures prices across different delivery horizons via the smoothed Bayesian estimatorof Karali, Dorfman, and Thurman (2010). We show that the futures price volatilitiesin these markets are affected by the...

Grain prices have risen sharply since 2005 and 2006 affecting livestock markets by increasingfeed prices and leading to significant volatility shocks. The high price levels and magnitude ofsustained high volatilities has raised concerns for many sectors of the economy, in particularthose with...

Taken together, studies that examine how well commodity futures marketsperform find that risk premiums are common—and so unbiasedness is not—and marketsare not uniformly efficient across commodities or forecast horizons. This large body ofresearch sheds important light on whether and to what...

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In this paper we develop a theoretical model that links dynamic efficiency measurement and optimal investment under uncertainty. It is widely acknowledged that uncertainty has an impact on the optimal factor use of a profit maximizing firm. This is particularly true for the optimal adjustment of...