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...

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 use a nested-dynamic programming framework to estimate an intra-seasonal dynamic model that explicitly incorporates a farmer's crop abandonment decision. The estimation is...

A discrete-time, continuous-space model of a livestock- crop producer is used to examine the long-run effects of phosphorus runoff controls on optimal livestock production and manure application practices. Quantity restrictions and taxes on phosphorus application are shown to reduce livestock...

Capital budgeting decisions faced by tart cherry producers often challenge our traditional valuation techniques. Real Options Valuation (ROV) methods may be useful but assumptions of existing ROV approaches are restrictive and, in some cases, unrealistic. In this paper we assert that use of...

The 2002 Farm Act allowed farm owners to update base acres for direct payments (DPs) and counter-cyclical payments (CCPs) and to update yields for counter-cyclical payments. A minority, about 40 percent, of the 1.9 million enrolled farms choose to update their base acres using 1998-2001...

The impact of new manure management regulations depends on the willingness of crop producers to accept manure. A contingent valuation analysis of crop producers was used to estimate the willingness of crop producers to accept or pay for manure. Results indicate that producers will pay a positive...

A translog stochastic cost frontier is estimated to calculate cost efficiency index (CEI) of 203 Kenyan and Ugandan maize producers using survey data from 2003. Results show a mean CEI of 1.95, with greater inefficiency among farms in Kenya of medium-large size. Key sources of inefficiency are...

A regression model was used to investigate the determinants of soil nutrient depletion in Uganda. The major determinants of soil nutrient balances are household endowments, access to markets, and extension services, non-farm activities and agricultural potential. The results suggest the need to...

This paper investigates the growth in the number of organic producers in the Netherlands. Using Bayesian techniques a logistic growth model explaining the share of organic farms is estimated. Prior information is used to estimate and compare three different models on the future of organic farming.