A large variety of subsidized crop insurance products are available to U.S. crop growers. Distinct and perhaps puzzling patterns in the choices of insurance products and coverage levels can be discerned. Where production conditions are better and yields are less risky then (a) higher insurance...

A large variety of subsidized crop insurance products are available to U.S. crop growers. Distinct and perhaps puzzling patterns in the choices of insurance products and coverage levels can be discerned. Where production conditions are better and yields are less risky then (a) higher insurance...

Feeder cattle are fattened to become fed live cattle 6 months later, and the feeder cattle stock is fixed in the short-run. Efficiency in competitive markets suggests feeder cattle prices should fully reflect feed prices and information on future fed cattle prices. Employing a long time series...

The use of plausible stochastic price processes in price risk analysis has allowed advances not seen in crop yield risk analysis. This study develops a stochastic process for yield modeling and risk management. The Pólya urn process is an internally consistent dynamic representation of yield...

While controversy surrounds skewness attributes of typical yield distributions, a better understanding is important for agricultural policy assessment and for crop-insurance rate setting. Day (1965) conjectured that crop yield skewness declines with an increase in nitrogen use at low levels but...

The spatial dimension of agricultural production is important when a communicable disease enters a region. This paper considers two sorts of biosecurity risk that producers can seek to protect against. One concerns the risk of  spread: that neighboring producers do not take due care in...

Often, a single production process gives rise to a mass distribution of quality levels. If prices vary with quality, then input use is determined by interactions between the production-quality-input use relationship and the price-quality relationship. Using the dominance methods, the way in...

Industrial processing emphasizes information on and control over quality of raw materials. This letter establishes conditions under which informed control involves ensuring uniformity in inputs and increased uniformity encourages more extensive processing. The Boltzmannï¾–Shannon entropy...

Price-dependent loan agreements at low interest rates have sometimes been included in North American hog sector long-term marketing contracts. We show that a general form of this stipulation can be viewed as a hybrid between a forward rate agreement and a bundle of commodity spot options. In...