The risk balancing literature suggests that business risk management (BRM) programs may, through risk balancing (offsetting adjustments between business risk and financial risk), lead farmers to take on more financial risk than they would take otherwise, which, in turn, increases the risk of...

This paper examines the relationship between uncertainty and investment decisions by food andnon-food firms. Using hysteresis and the real options paradigm, we review why uncertaintymight cause firms to delay investment. In particular, our model looks for a negative relationshipbetween capital...

Generic income stabilization schemes, which resemble an actual NISA policy adopted recently in Canada, encourage farmers to set aside funds in high income year for use in low income years through a formal procedure. Their economic effects are investigated using the prudent farm household model....

To reduce vulnerability and food insecurity this paper investigates the economics of micro-credit. We provide a model that shows how a micro-credit market based on trust can co-exist with a commercial collateral-based market. This model is developed in detail and certain propositions are...

This paper examines the relationship between uncertainty and investment decisions by food and non-food firms. Using hysteresis and the real options paradigm, we review why uncertainty might cause firms to delay investment. In particular, our model looks for a negative relationship between...

The purpose of this paper is to develop a general approach to valuing commodity-linked bonds (CLBs) based on the Heath-Jarrow-Morton (HJM) framework. The model deals with four dimensions of uncertainty: prices of the underlying commodity, the value of firm that issues bonds, interest rates, and...

How high is too high? Soaring Interest Rates and the Elasticity of Demand for Microcredit

Economists who deal with time-series data usually take the unit root test as the ‘prerequisite’ test for a Brownian motion. It is typical for any researchers to apply a battery of well-known unit root tests to their models to confirm stationarity in the model specification. Nonetheless,...