The U.S. market in subsidized commodity revenue insurance contracts has expanded rapidly since 1996. By far the most prevalent contract forms are crop-specific, rather than the whole-farm design which has a better claim to being optimal. For an arbitrary acre allocation vector, this paper...

This paper presents preliminary evidence on the effect of crop insurance on fertilizer and chemical inputs in agriculture. Our estimates are based on two sources of identification that emerge from a policy change concerning insurance subsidies that approximately doubled total premiums and the...

A well-known feature of pollution control with tradable quota rights is that the benefits to ownership will capitalize into prices of the quota. Quota present a unique opportunity to examine the effect of risks introduced by governmental programs because all the return to quota is dependent upon...

The EPA has imposed mandatory refuge requirements for Bt crops to prolong the efficacy of Bt. Growers have no economic incentive to plant the required refuge because refuge crops are on average less productive and more risky. This paper evaluates refuge insurance--insurance that pays indemnities...

The optimal crop revenue insurance contract is designed from recent developments in the theory of insurance economics under incomplete markets. The message is two-fold. Firstly, when the indemnity schedule is contingent onindividual price and individual yield, the optimal contract depends only...

Risk and uncertainty in a water market will generate trading patterns that differ from those expected under conditions of perfect foresight. Although trades will occur based on differences in VMPs of water in both markets, they will also be generated by differences in risk. Some farmers will...

The failure of the development of commercially viable traditional crop insurance products and innovations in financial markers has fed a renewed interest in the search for alternatives to help producers in developing countries manage their risk exposure. Salient among these is the proposal of...

This paper developed an economic framework to analyze the economic impacts of an ECP on trade flows within the context of a partial equilibrium approach which assumes that non-payment risks are distinct between selling at home and abroad based on difficulties and expense in recovering...

Economists attribute many common behaviors to risk aversion and frequently focus on how wealth moderates risk preferences. This paper highlights a problem associated with empirical tests of the relationship between wealth and risk aversion that can arise when the probabilities individuals face...

Malt barley is an important specialty crop in the Northern Plains and growers mitigate risk with federally subsidized crop insurance and production contracts. However, growers face considerable risk due to "“coverage gaps"” in crop insurance that result in uncertain indemnity payments due to...