Representing farm-level crop yield heterogeneity and distributional form is critical for risk and crop insurance research. Most studies have used county data, understating both systematic and random variation. Comparison of systematic versus random intra-county variation is lacking. Few studies...

The agricultural sectors of the United States and other developed countries have been subjected to a myriad of policies and regulations that have contributed to unsatisfactory production patterns and resource allocations both within and between countries. Furthermore, such policies have imposed...

There is a broad consensus among economists, policymakers, and informed citizens that free-market economics do not preclude many inefficiencies in resource allocation. There are many circumstances where policy interventions have the potential to achieve a "Pareto improvement" in the sense of...

The concept of parameter identification (for a given specification) is differentiated from global identification (which specification is right). First-order conditions for production under risk are shown to admit many alternative specification pairs representing risk preferences and either...