Producers have a wide variety of risk management instruments available. How do producers make a choice of risk management instruments? Using the recently developed choice bracketing framework, we examine what risk management strategies producers use and identify the factors that drive their risk...

The validity of the utility concept, particularly in an expected utility framework, has been questioned because of its inability to predict revealed behavior. In this paper we focus on the global shape of the utility function instead of the local shape of the utility function. We examine the...

Price volatility in the corn market has changed considerably globalization and stronger linkages to the energy complex. Using data from January 1989 through December 2009, we estimate and forecast the volatility in the corn market using futures daily prices. Estimates in a Fractional Integrated...

Basis risk has been cited as a primary concern for implementing weather hedges. This studyinvestigates several dimensions of weather basis risk for the U.S. corn market at variouslevels of aggregation. The results suggest that while the degree of geographic basis risk maybe significant in some...

Heterogeneity, i.e., the notion that individuals respond differently to economic stimuli, can have profound consequences for the interpretation of behavior and the formulation of agricultural policy. This paper compares and evaluates three grouping techniques that can be used to account for...

This paper investigates the dynamics of sequential decision-making in agricultural futures andoptions markets using a quantile regression framework. Analysis of trading records of 12 traderssuggests that there is great heterogeneity in individual trading behavior. Traders responddifferently to...

Basis risk has been cited as a primary concern for implementing weather hedges. This study investigates several dimensions of weather basis risk for the U.S. corn market at various levels of aggregation. The results suggest that while the degree of geographic basis risk may be significant in...

Using survey data from 258 Illinois corn farmers, we investigate the relationship between subjective and objective yield measures and their effect on the use of crop insurance. Our findings show that producers view themselves as better than average with respect to yields and in terms of their...

Previous studies identify limited potential efficacy of weather derivatives in hedging agricultural exposures. In contrast to earlier studies which investigate the problem at low levels of aggregation, we find that better weather hedging opportunities may exist at higher levels of spatial...

The validity of the utility concept, particularly in an expected utility framework, has been questioned because of its inability to predict revealed behavior. In this paper we focus on the global shape of the utility function instead of the local shape of the utility function. We examine the...