The main objective of this study is to compare the impacts of government payments and crop insurance policies on the use of futures and options measured from a downside risk hedge model with the impacts analyzed by the expected utility (EU) hedge model. Understanding the effects of...

Agricultural economists have for many decades concerned ourselves with gaining an understanding of individual behavior when confronted with risk, and developing tools to address decision-making under risk. This area of research has recently gained renewed attention for a variety of reasons. This...

This article focuses on innovation in weather insurance designed to fit the special circum-stances of the poor in lower income countries where rural and agricultural financial markets are largely underdeveloped. Index insurance is an innovation that circumvents many of the fundamental problems...