We examine the role of acquirers’ familiarity with targets’ significant downside risks in M&A. We introduce a measure of a firm’s familiarity with another firm’s business downsides using similarity of their risk factor descriptions. We first show that this measure is distinct from...

In 2007 and 2008 world food markets observed a significant price boom. Crop failures simultaneously occurring in some of the world's major production regions have been quoted as one factor among others for the price boom. Against this background, we analyse the stochasticity of crop yields in...

Systemic weather risk is a major obstacle for the formation of private (non- subsidized) crop insurance. This paper explores the possibility of spatial diversification of insurance by estimating the joint occurrence of unfavorable weather conditions in different locations. For that purpose...