We analyze the risks, returns and optimal adoption strategies for a representative Minnesota farm switching from conventional to organic cropping systems. The EPIC simulation model was calibrated based on the yields observed in a farming systems field study. A farm-level simulation model was...

Knowledge of low-income issues in floodplain management is spotty. Repeated flooding resulting from hurricanes striking North Carolina, and most recently Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, has raised concerns that vulnerable low-income communities may be more exposed to the devastating costs of...

In many areas agriculture is exposed to weather-related risks. Weather derivatives that get more and more in the focus of interest can reduce these risks. In this study we develop a temperature based weather derivative and analyse how it can reduce the weather-related energy cost risk in...

The failure of the development of commercially viable traditional crop insurance products and innovations in financial markers has fed a renewed interest in the search for alternatives to help producers in developing countries manage their risk exposure. Salient among these is the proposal of...

The relationship between price uncertainty and specific investment is examined in a dynamic model that integrates the theories of real options and investment holdup. Because of weak contract enforcement, bilateral firms cannot use a contract to govern their bilateral investment and exchange...

In this article we price a precipitation option based on empirical weather data from Germany using different pricing methods, among them Burn Analysis, Index Value Simulation and Daily Simulation. For that purpose we develop a daily precipitation model. Moreover, a de-correlation analysis is...

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...