This study examines the effects of weather shock on households’ decision to engage in different types of off-farm work in rural Ethiopia. A multinomial logit model is applied to household data collected in 1999 and 2004. The regression results show that the level and variability of...

Previous studies emphasize that shocks can cause households to fall into poverty traps and to remain there because of risk aversion, yet to date there has been no attempt to discern whether shocks increase risk aversion over time in a developing country. We examine whether shocks increase risk...

This paper analyzed the impact of farm and farmer characteristics on the acceptability to dairy farmers in the Netherlands of an all-risk insurance package and underlying specific categories of insurance coverage. The major farm characteristics considered were structural, operational and...

Recent and presumable future developments tend to increase the risks associated with farming activities. These include climate risks which have always played an important role in farming. Weather based instruments can be valuable tools to reduce the risk associate with unfavourable climatic...

This paper considers the potential for securitizing index-based insurance products that transfer weather and natural disaster risks from lower income countries. The paper begins with a brief overview of why markets for natural disaster risks are important in lower income countries and a review...

Replaced with revised version of paper 11/18/08.

Basis risk has been cited as a primary concern for implementing weather hedges. This study investigates several dimensions of weather basis risk for the U.S. corn market at various levels of aggregation. The results suggest that while the degree of geographic basis risk may be significant in...

Replaced with revised version of paper 11/18/08

The aim of this study was to compare production and policy risk of organic, integrated and conventional cropping systems in Norway. Experimental cropping system data (1991-1999) from eastern Norway were combined with budgeted data. Empirical distributions of total farm income for different...

This paper compares two ways of financing the combating of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) in the EU and uses a simulation model to determine the welfare and production implications of the two systems. The two systems analysed are (i) financing by the tax payers, resembling the system currently in...