Changes in the risk environment and tools available to manage risk have resulted in an increased need for risk management skills among farmers and ranchers. In response the USDA initiated a risk management education competitive grants program in the spring of 1998. This is the first report from...

Producer and other interest groups are beginning to consider farm policy positions in anticipation of hearings and possible serious farm bill debates during late 2006 and 2007. An idea gaining attention and support among some groups is deemphasizing or eliminating the current commodity "price"...

A variety of crop revenue insurance programs is now available. These programs require measurement of price risk. This article investigates the appropriateness of distributional assumptions underlying current and proposed alternative actuarial methods. Our results find that prices are best...

This study explores the impact of technical inefficiency on agricultural supply functions in Ukraine. Two models using a system of output supply and input demand equations were evaluated in this research: one without inefficiency included in the model and another with inefficiency included. A...

Establishing that there is no compelling evidence that some population is not normally distributed is fundamental to many statistical inferences, and numerous approaches to testing the null hypothesis of normality have been proposed. Fundamentally, the power of a test depends on which specific...

Federal crop insurance programs offer producers the option of insuring farm units individually or as an aggregate unit. Existing programs offer a fixed 10% discount for most growers taking coverage at the aggregate level. This article describes an analysis of risk changes when units are...

A random-effects, binomial probit model is applied to data for a panel of Kansas wheat farms to examine Multiple Peril Crop Insurance demand. A theoretical model is developed which suggests inclusion of the moments of both market return and the return to insurance. Empirical results indicate...

This research investigates the strategic behavior of private crop insurance firms reinsured by the USDA through the Standard Reinsurance Agreement. This arrangement allows the private firm to strategically allocate individual policies into different risk-sharing arrangements. Thus, firm earnings...

Consumers' risk preferences are often overlooked in studies of consumer demand for risky food. We find that risk preferences elicited through context-less lottery choices are significantly related to consumers' stated preferences for genetically modified (GM) food. These results suggest risk...

A definition of moral hazard in multiple peril crop insurance is proposed that focuses on expected indemnities rather than input use. Five years of production and insurance data for a panel of Kansas wheat farms is used to empirically test for this type of moral hazard. Results suggest that...