The U.S. has a long history of providing generous support for the agricultural sector. A recent omnibus package of farm legislation, the 2008 Farm Bill (P.L. 110-246) will provide in excess of $284 billion in financial support to U.S. agriculture over the 2008-2012 period. Commodity program...

Goodwin and Mahul identify the key issues and concerns that arise in the design and rating of crop yield insurance plans, with a particular emphasis on production risk modeling. The authors show how the availability of data shapes the insurance scheme and the ratemaking procedures. Relying on...

Food manufacturing and processing is an important link between agricultural producers and consumers in the agricultural supply chain. The food manufacturing sector in the United States is both increasingly mechanized and increasingly concentrated. Consequently, labor risks in food manufacturing...

The federal crop insurance program covered more than 110 billion dollars in total liability in 2018. The program consists of policies across a wide range of crops, plans, and locations. Weather and other latent variables induce dependence among components of the portfolio. Computing...

The conventional functional form of the Constant-Elasticity-of-Substitution (CES) production function is a general production function nesting a number of other forms of production functions. Examples of such functions include Leontief, Cobb–Douglas, and linear production functions....

The authors identify the key issues and concerns that arise in the design and rating of crop yield insurance plans, with a particular emphasis on production risk modeling. The authors show how the availability of data shapes the insurance scheme and the ratemaking procedures. Relying on the U.S....