To many people, futures trading is a little understood and rather suspicious activity. The word most often associated with this trading is "speculation", the idea being that most of those involved in futures markets are gamblers in a high stakes game seeking profit at the expense of those...

Agriculture development efforts in the past have focused heavily on increasing aggregate output in less developed countries (LDC). In the last 2-3 decades, technology served as a key policy instrument used by developed countries to aid the less developed ones. However, such a policy had led to...

This review examines the psychological literature on risk perception in terms of van Ravenswaay's proposal of a broad-based definition of risk perception that includes the three concepts of chance, harm, and context. The review further investigates the manner in which psychological researchers...

The commodity-linked bond offers a potential means for producers of primary goods both to raise capital and to hedge against output price risk. Commodity bonds are distinguished from conventional bonds in that their return structure is denominated in quantities of the underlying commodity....

The broad purpose of this study is to compare patron owned with investor owned firms in terms of the arrangements they make to cope with the risk inherent in the exchange of grain between Michigan farmers and the first-handler grain firms that serve them. Focus will be upon possible distinctions...

As contractual agriculture expands, contract design offers a non-regulatory opportunity to reduce non-point source pollution. A risk programming analysis of seed corn contract designs illustrates a tractable empirical principal-agent model, and shows that grower risk preferences affect contract...

Implicit in most applications of the expected utility (EU) model is the assumption that only the decision maker's own income matters. Moreover, studies that estimate risk preferences typically measure how individuals respond to changes in the level and likelihood of having their own income...

This is a revised copy of Staff Paper 2000-48.

The focus of this paper is on outlining the procedures used to estimate the premium rates for the Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) insurance plan. The AGR rating procedures draw substantially on rating procedures used in products currently reinsured and subsidized by Risk Management Agency/USDA...

The economic well-being of economic agents is assumed to be interpersonally dependent. The extent of this interpersonal dependency varies according to the strength of relationships, values, and social bonds and is measured using social capital coefficients in a neoclassical model in which agents...