We use a large increase in Federal crop insurance subsidies as a natural experiment to identify the impact of risk on acreage and diversification decisions. Subsidy increases induced greater crop insurance coverage, which reduced farmers' financial risks. Did this change in the risk environment...

This paper presents preliminary evidence on the effect of crop insurance on fertilizer and chemical inputs in agriculture. Our estimates are based on two sources of identification that emerge from a policy change concerning insurance subsidies that approximately doubled total premiums and the...

We use administrative data from the Federal crop insurance program to examine how yield distributions change as farmers cycle into and out of the program. We are able to do this by linking many years of crop insurance data by individual farm conditioning observed yields on the particular county...

In 1994, some 56 years after initial authorization, the Federal crop insurance program remained characterized by low enrollment levels. Many argued for increased coverage and subsequent major pieces of legislation in 1994, and 2000 expanded the program and increased premium subsidies. Enrollment...

We use a large increase in Federal crop insurance subsidies as a natural experiment to identify the impact of risk on acreage and diversification decisions. Subsidy increases induced greater crop insurance coverage, which reduced farmers' financial risks. Did this change in the risk environment...

This paper presents preliminary evidence on the effect of crop insurance on fertilizer and chemical inputs in agriculture. Our estimates are based on two sources of identification that emerge from a policy change concerning insurance subsidies that approximately doubled total premiums and the...

The current debate surrounding the 2012 Farm Act stresses cutting costs while maintaining, or even strengthening, farmers’ “safety net.” One way to cut costs is to reduce or eliminate potential overlap of farm program payments. Using simulations, we explore the interaction between the...

The curvature properties of the indirect utility function imply a set of refutable implications in the form of comparative static results and symmetric relations for the competitive firm operating under uncertainty. These hypotheses, first derived and empirically tested under output price...

The curvature properties of the indirect utility function imply a set of refutable implications in the form of comparative static results and symmetric relations for the competitive firm operating under uncertainty. These hypotheses, first derived and empirically tested under output price...

The curvature properties of the indirect utility function imply a set of refutable implications in the form of comparative static results and symmetric relations for the competitive firm operating under uncertainty. These hypotheses, first derived and empirically tested under output price...