We hypothesize a reciprocal causation between crop insurance use and the economic performance of farms in an environment characterized by imperfect financial markets and farms’ budget constraints. To test our hypothesis, we apply a system of simultaneous equations consisting of economic...

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...