In the present paper, risk-management problems where farmers manage risk both through production decisions and through the use of market-based and informal risk-management mechanisms are considered. It is shown that many of these problems share a common structure, and that a unified and...

The standard approach to modelling production under uncertainty has relied on the concept of the stochastic production function. In the present paper, it is argued that a state-contingent production model is more flexible and realistic. The model is applied to the problem of drought policy

The state-contingent properties of the most frequently used representations of stochastic production in the agricultural-economics literature are examined. Particular attention is paid to the cases of multiplicative uncertainty, additive uncertainty, and the Just-Pope production function....

Optimal producer behavior in the presence of area-yield insurance is studied. The producer's optimal production and insurance choices are characterized. The effect of the provision of area-yield insurance on production patterns is studied, and sufficient conditions for the provision of...

The optimal design of farm policy and public investment in agriculture in the presence of asymmetric information between the government and farmers is studied. It is shown that a mix of capped deficiency payments and voluntary paid land diversion can implement the optimal policy outcome. Optimal...

Optimal trade policy in an uncertain world is examined. Decision-maker attitudes toward uncertainty are represented in terms of the Gilboa-Schmeidler (1989) maximin expected-utility (MMEU) model. The central result is that in a two-country, general-equilibrium setting with both trading partners...

This article studies the comparative statics of output subsidies for firms, with monotonic preferences over costs and returns, that face price and production uncertainty. The modeling of deficiency payments, support-price schemes, and stochastic supply shifts in a state-space framework is...

The implementability of area-yield insurance contracts in the presence of symmetric and asymmetric information about the farmer's "beta" linking his yield to the risk-pool's yield is examined. In the presence of fixed costs and symmetric information result that optimality requires setting the...

Most developed countries support farming activities through policies that are tailored to meet their specific social, economic and environmental objectives. Economic and environmental efficiency have recently become relevant targets of most of these policies, whose sound implementation can be...

This article studies the influence of risk on farms’ technical efficiency levels. The analysis extends the order-m efficiency scores approach proposed by Daraio and Simar (2005) to the state-contingent framework. The empirical application focuses on cross section data of Catalan specialized...