Lack of protection from downside risk has been posited as one explanation for sluggish technology uptake among subsistence agricultural households in the developing world. Access to credit and insurance is thought to be a stimulant to technology adoption where new methods are riskier but higher...

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...

Very little attention has been given to the modeling of yield distribution for crops and regions in which yields exhibit irregular behavior. We undertake a statistical case study of Texas upland cotton and propose an alternative mixture distribution based on regime-switching model in which the...

The influence of climate variability on agricultural production and financial risks faced by an individual or an institution has been the center of the public discussion in the recent years. The changing weather patterns and environmental conditions could cause substantial unpredicted economic...

According to the Taiwan Council of Agriculture, frost was responsible for approximately 30 percent of aquaculture losses in Taiwan during the period 1999-2008. Farmed milkfish, the most important aquaculture crop in Taiwan, is particularly sensitive to temperature variations, and can experience...

This paper analyzes the potential trade offs and complementarities that exist between intra-year strategies employing annual price and yield risk contracts and inter-year self-insurance strategies involving intertemporal consumption substitution and borrowing, and examines whether standard crop...

The paper discusses a methodology for design and pricing of index insurance contracts for crop production. The methodology heavily relies on establishing a relationship between the index and yields in order to evaluate the contract performance in hedging farmers' risk. However, analysis of...

During the Global Food Price Crisis of 2007-2011, millions of people suffered from hunger because food had become expensive. To cope with this problem, the governments of several countries decided to establish public food reserves in order to stabilize domestic prices. In this paper we develop a...

This paper analyzes effects of hypothetical changes in the Standard Reinsurance Agreement (SRA) on rates of return of private insurance companies participating in delivery of crop insurance. A computer simulation program is used to model companies' returns under the current and alternative SRA...