Texas dryland upland cotton yields have historically exhibited greater variation and more distributional irregularities than the yields of other crops, raising concerns that conventional parametric distribution models may generate biased or otherwise inaccurate crop insurance premium rate...

Empirical evidence for the existence of moral hazard in the U.S. crop insurance program has been inconclusive. Here, we seek empirical evidence of moral hazard in the U.S. crop insurance program, departing from the established empirical literature in two significant respects. First, we attempt...

A dynamic, stochastic, rational expectations model of a peasant household with access to deposits and loans (up to a credit limit) is solved and simulated. If formal contracts offer more favorable rates than informal contracts, then access to formal contracts increases average consumption and...

An economic analysis is presented of the Standard Reinsurance Agreement (SRA), the contract governing the relationship between the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation and the private insurance companies that deliver crop insurance products to farmers. The paper outlines provisions of the SRA and...

This paper examines the contract design problem of microfinance institutions seeking to maximize outreach to the poor while remaining financially sustainable. A dynamic model of group lending is developed that shows how optimal interest rates depend on information regarding moral hazard and...

Significant number of consumers in Australia patronizes non‐scanning stores in spite of not being issued itemized receipts for the goods they purchase. In order to understand the attitude of consumers to receipts that give only limited information, shoppers exiting non‐scanning stores were...

Purpose – To identify the factors that influence shoppers' satisfaction with their “primary” grocery store, and those that encourage them to continue patronising it despite being presented with a significant inducement to shop elsewhere. Design/methodology/approach – A structured...

Purpose – The aim is to examine whether supermarkets may be losing the opportunity to increase customer purchase outlays by means of loyalty points, convertible to acquire specialty goods and services provided by “bonus partners”. Design/methodology/approach – Two econometric models were...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to give retailers an insight into consumers' capacity for feeling pleasure associated with specific purchase motivations across different product categories. Design/methodology/approach – A hedonic regression model was estimated from data collected from...

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Linear Equations and Computer Basics -- 3 Nonlinear Equations and Complementarity Problems -- 4 Finite-Dimensional Optimization -- 5 Numerical Integration and Differentiation -- 6 Function Approximation -- 7 Discrete Time, Discrete State...