This paper analyzes the potential trade offs and complementarities that exist between intra-year strategies employing annual price and yield risk contracts and inter-year self-insurance strategies involving intertemporal consumption substitution and borrowing, and examines whether standard crop...

This study examines the risks associated with adoption of biotech crops and discusses their implications for risk management at the farm level. We develop an analytical risk evaluation matrix framework to illustrate changes in production and marketing risks of biotech and non-biotech crops....

This report analyzes farmers' choice of crop insurance contracts and tests for the presence of asymmetric information in the market for multiple yield and revenue insurance products. Farmers' risk characteristics, their level of income, and the cost of insurance significantly affect their...

In recent years, the crop insurance program has emerged as an important part of the U.S. farm policy. Farmers responded to the crop insurance program with increased participation nationwide. At issue is whether the rapid expansion of the program has worsened the asymmetric information problems...

This paper examines the potential for adverse selection when farmers are offered a portfolio of insurance policies. We analyze the risk characteristics farmers who bought alternative insurance instruments in 1996-97. Inability to differentiate farmers according to risk types results in pooling...

Empirical evidence for the existence of moral hazard in the U.S. crop insurance program has been inconclusive. Here, we seek empirical evidence of moral hazard in the U.S. crop insurance program, departing from the established empirical literature in two significant respects. First, we attempt...

This paper examines how insurance companies participating in delivery of crop insurance would change patterns of portfolio allocation across reinsurance funds in reaction to the 2005 Standard Reinsurance Agreement. The returns of insurance companies under the SRA are calculated using a...

The paper discusses a methodology for design and pricing of index insurance contracts for crop production. The methodology heavily relies on establishing a relationship between the index and yields in order to evaluate the contract performance in hedging farmers' risk. However, analysis of...

Very little attention has been given to the modeling of yield distribution for crops and regions in which yields exhibit irregular behavior. We undertake a statistical case study of Texas upland cotton and propose an alternative mixture distribution based on regime-switching model in which the...

The Global Food Price Crisis of 2007-2011 had mixed effects on the poor in developing nations. By some estimates, the Crisis lifted nearly 24 million poor farmers out of poverty; however, it also cast 68 million net food buyers into poverty. In this paper, we analyze the distributional impacts...