We analyze the link between large and destructive floods and armed conflict in 117 countries between 1985 and 2009 employing flood-induced migration as a potential transmission channel. We use rainfall as an instrument for flood-induced migration and employ a two step procedure (Rivers and Vuong...

Crop insurance is an area of federal agricultural policy that has been a source of continual calls for reform and improvement, yet there are a limited number of empirical studies examining farmers' insurance purchase decisions. As far as we are aware, this study is the first to utilize farm...

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...

Futures markets have two main goals: price discovery and risk management. Because management decisions often have to be made on a time horizon longer than the time until expiration of the nearby futures contract, it is important to determine how well distant-delivery futures contracts are able...

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

This article extends the literature on economic valuation of public interventions that reduce environmental risk. We consider the case where risk-reducing interventions have different characteristics than the risk proxies used in hedonic regressions. We then demonstrate the importance of these...

Characteristics of farm level yield and revenue loss that is systemic with yield and revenue loss at the county, state, and U.S. level are examined using farm yields from the Illinois and Kansas farm business management associations. The data begins with 1972. Share of yield and revenue loss...

Recent changes in federal farm programs and contemporary farm program proposals highlight an evolving shift in farm policy from income support to risk management. A mix of price- and revenue-based commodity programs as well as yield- and revenue-based insurance products provide crop producers a...

Although significant research has been done on managing farmers’ financial risk through federal programs such as federal crop insurance, to date, little attention has been paid to the ability of on-farm management’s potential to mitigate agricultural risk. Federal crop insurance could...

Topic Relevance Foliar diseases often reduce grain yields of winter wheat in the southern Great Plains, with some individual year yield losses in excess of 10%. At current prices, the gross value of these losses for the region could exceed a quarter of a billion dollars annually. Historically,...