Since the mid-nineties, agricultural economists discuss the suitability of “weather derivatives” as hedging instruments for volumetric risks in agriculture. Contrary to traditional insurance contracts, the payoffs of such derivatives are linked to weather indices (e.g. accumulated rainfall...

The 2002 New Zealand Transport Strategy states that in the long run, economic development and transport activity need not be directly related. This implies that a degree of „decoupling‟ is required – that economic development needs to occur without similar growth in transport. Before...

This paper deals with the fiscally neutral transferability of profits from land sales according to § 6b EStG and its possible effect on the price for agricultural land. From the point of view of the single farm this tax norm has an excellent effect. Nevertheless, from the point of view of the...

The objective of this paper is to investigate the performance of different Value-at-Risk (VaR) models in the context of risk assessment in hog production. The paper starts with a description of traditional VaR models, i.e. Variance-Covariance-Method (VCM) and Historical Simulation (HS). We...

Many German farmers do no longer accept the annual premiums forthe state accident insurance, which sometimes reach a considerabledegree. The farmers are of the opinion that the specific accident riskof each farm has to be taken into account. So far, the agrarian professionalassociations as...

Market-based instruments (MBIs) for resource management create financial incentives for people and businesses to use resources more efficiently, within a regulatory context designed to ensure that ecological, social and cultural objectives are also met. Three case studies were done to identify...

The understanding of how allocation decisions can maximise the economic returns to the community from water for irrigation has received little attention, but is a significant issue for regional councils, those interested in water allocation policy development, and for irrigated farmers. There is...

We used the well-being evaluation method, a technique for measuring individual utility, to study how people in the wildland urban interface of Colorado (USA) felt about their lives before and after two wildfire scenarios. Variables such as age, family size, fire frequency, and house value were...

In his numerous textbooks WILHELM BRANDES has laid the foundation for theoretically appropriate modeling of farm firms, which has recently been expanded to modeling sustainability goals. The published research results belong to the fields of economic, ecological, and social sustainability....

This paper discusses the real options approach to investment. Real options facilitate an analysis of investment under uncertainty explicitly taking into account irreversibility of the investment decision and flexibility with respect to the investment timing. This is achieved by exploiting the...