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...

Purpose – This article seeks to examine the reference yield calculation method used in crop insurance rating and provides recommendations that could potentially improve actuarial performance of the Federal crop insurance program. Design/methodology/approach – Conceptual, numerical, and...

The US crop insurance program previously used a simple average of equally weighted historical loss cost data to serve as the backbone for estimating crop insurance premium rates. This article develops a procedure for weighting the historical loss cost experience based on longer time-series...

We review the implications of the 2007 Farm Bill for the risk management dimensions of U.S. agriculture and policy. Legislative proposals suggest significant changes in risk management policy, including the introduction of state or national revenue insurance. We also pursue an empirical analysis...