This article reviews two major approached used in the past for risk analysis—the expected utility approach and the use of safety rules—and endeavors to reconcile their applicability and use in light of the recent nonexpected utility risk literature and working using the mean-Gini...

Revenue insurance, only recently introduced for major crops in the U.S., has captured a considerable share of the multiple-peril insurance market. This study evaluates the predictive reliability of using price distributions inferred from options markets to rate revenue insurance products. We...

An econometric procedure for estimating Arrow-Pratt coefficients of risk aversion is derived. The model of farmers allocating land among different crops, and time between leisure and labor, allows for testing Arrow's hypotheses of decreasing absolute risk aversion and increasing relative risk...

We use the actual insurance records of 52,300 farmers and 11 years to estimate two sets of insurance demands. We define measures of insurance's expected returns, variance and third moment, based on observed insurance data, and infer the expected returns for those farmers that have never had an...

Major externality cases are random accidents which are not adequately addressed by the deterministic environmental policy literature -­‐ that of Pigouvian taxes, abatement subsidies and cap-­‐and-­‐trade. We consider a risk-­‐neutral industry where firms control the probability...

We develop a model of regulation of environmental risks in a heterogeneousindustry when policy makers are sensitive to uncertainties about the processes generating the risks. Optimal source reduction capacity is shown to vary according to site suitability. Optimal source reduction capacity and...

Traditionally, disaster assistance was available on an ad hoc basis, but the 2008 Farm Act provides a standing disaster assistance program known as Supplemental Revenue Assistance (SURE). This paper introduces a theory of nested insurance to evaluate the impact on of SURE on intensification,...

Do transgenic crops cause agrobiodiversity erosion? We hypothesize that they increase productivity and reduce production risk and may therefore reduce farmer demand for on-farm varietal diversity, especially when only a few transgenic varieties are available. We also hypothesize that varietal...