When natural disasters strike in developing countries, households are often forced to choose between preserving assets or consumption: either can result in permanent consequences. In this paper we ask: can insurance transfer risk in a way that reduces the need for households to rely on costly...

Due to the increased share of food consumption away from (FAFH) on overall household food expenditure, a considerable body of literature has examined the impacts of FAFH on diet quality and physical health. A conventional wisdom is that FAFH is associated with poor diet quality, and it also...

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...

Is the relationship between energy and agricultural commodities an important factor in the increasing price variability of food commodities? Findings from the literature appear to be mixed and highly influenced by the data frequency used in those analysis. A recurrent task in time series applied...

Given the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from beef production and rising concerns with climate change, genomics have been introduced to facilitate selective breeding for increased feed efficiency in beef cattle as one area of emissions reductions. Public perception is an...

The United States cheese consumption has grown considerably over the years. Using Nielsen Homescan panel data for calendar years 2005 and 2006, this paper examines the effect of economic and socio-demographic factors on the demand for disaggregated cheese varieties. In this study, we estimated...

The literature on the impacts of biofuels on food prices is characterized by contradictory findings and a wide range of estimates. To bring more clarity to this issue, we review studies on U.S. corn ethanol expansion released between 2008 and 2013. Normalizing corn price impacts by the increase...

We exploit variation in the timing of specialty crop insurance supply to different crops and counties in California to assess its effect on output as decomposed into yield and harvested acreage. Four woody-perennial crops and one field-annual crop are used to represent this effect. We find that...