Author: Jerry Robert Skees
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Author: Cornell University. College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Dept. of Agricultural, Resource and Managerial Economics
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Lawmakers often subsidize farmers in times of financial distress. This article models this political impulse as a constraint on government farm policy, describing how ex ante government farm insurance can deter ex post“disaster relief” and improve production incentives by countering the moral hazard that otherwise prevails. Absent ex ante government policy, ex post relief takes the form of revenue insurance, which prompts excessive entry into farm production and under-production by operating farmers. Ex ante government policy can raise economic and political welfare by buying out low productivity farmers and offering profitable farmers a combination of revenue insurance, price supports, and a program participation fee.

Author: Wolfram Schlenker
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022661980X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Agricultural yields have increased steadily in the last half century, particularly since the Green Revolution. At the same time, inflation-adjusted agricultural commodity prices have been trending downward as increases in supply outpace the growth of demand. Recent severe weather events, biofuel mandates, and a switch toward a more meat-heavy diet in emerging economies have nevertheless boosted commodity prices. Whether this is a temporary jump or the beginning of a longer-term trend is an open question. Agricultural Productivity and Producer Behavior examines the factors contributing to the remarkably steady increase in global yields and assesses whether yield growth can continue. This research also considers whether agricultural productivity growth has been, and will be, associated with significant environmental externalities. Among the topics studied are genetically modified crops; changing climatic factors; farm production responses to government regulations including crop insurance, transport subsidies, and electricity subsidies for groundwater extraction; and the role of specific farm practices such as crop diversification, disease management, and water-saving methods. This research provides new evidence that technological as well as policy choices influence agricultural productivity.

Author: Petra Moser
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022677905X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
"The challenges facing agriculture are plenty. Along with the world's growing population and diminishing amounts of water and arable land, the gradual increase in severe weather presents new challenges and imperatives for producing new, more resilient crops to feed a more crowded planet in the twenty-first century. Innovation has historically helped agriculture keep pace with earth's social, population, and ecological changes. In the last 50 years, mechanical, biological, and chemical innovations have more than doubled agricultural output while barely changing input quantities. The ample investment behind these innovations was available because of a high rate of return: a 2007 paper found that the median ROI in agriculture was 45 percent between 1965 and 2005. This landscape has changed. Today many of the world's wealthier countries have scaled back their share of GDP devoted to agricultural R&D amid evidence of diminishing returns. Universities, which have historically been a major source of agricultural innovation, increasingly depend on funding from industry rather than government to fund their research. As Upton Sinclair wrote of the effects industry influences, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." In this volume of the NBER Conference Report series, editor Petra Moser offers an empirical, applied-economic framework to the different elements of agricultural R&D, particularly as they relate to the shift from public to private funding. Individual chapters examine the sources of agricultural knowledge and investigate challenges for measuring the returns to the adoption of new agricultural technologies, examine knowledge spillovers from universities to agricultural innovation, and explore interactions between university engagement and scientific productivity. Additional analysis of agricultural venture capital point to it as an emerging and future source of resource in this essential domain"--

Author: Ghosh, Ranjan Kumar
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 43

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Book Description
Researchers and policymakers have long understood the benefits of crop insurance but have been consistently disappointed by the poor performance of these programs. Rarely have programs seen sizeable take-up rates without support through large government subsidies, and in many countries, demand has been meager even at prices well below fair-market rates. Experiences from India have largely followed this trend, despite a number of large policy initiatives. Limited demand stems from low perceived value, arguably because the existing insurance products are unsuited to farmers’ needs. The present study fills an important gap in rural development by improving upon existing insurance policy design by incorporating product characteristics better suited to farmers’ preferences. To do so, we conducted a discrete choice experiment with agricultural households in four states in India. While farmers seem to like several of the features of policies offered under existing programs, our results suggest they would generally be willing to pay more than the highly subsidized rate they currently pay and are also clearly dissatisfied with delayed and uncertain indemnity payments and would be willing to pay a significant premium for more assured and timely payment delivery.

Author: Donald J. Meyer
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute
ISBN: 0880992689
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Annotation This book contains a collection of papers that address various aspects of risk, including riskmanagement and how it is applied to decisionmaking and the impact of risk on markets

Author: Johan F.M. Swinnen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1783484853
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 597

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Book Description
After five years of debates, consultations and negotiations, the European institutions reached an agreement in 2013 on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the 2014-2020 period. The outcome has major implications for the EU’s budget and farmers’ incomes, but also for Europe’s environment, its contribution to global climate change and to food security in the EU and in the world. It was decided to spend more than €400 billion during the rest of the decade on the CAP. The official claims are that the new CAP will take better account of society's expectations and lead to far-reaching changes by making subsidies fairer and ‘greener’ and making the CAP more efficient. It is also asserted that the CAP will play a key part in achieving the overall objective of promoting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. However, there is significant scepticism about these claims and disappointment with the outcome of the decision-making, the first in which the European Parliament was involved under the co-decision procedure. In contrast to earlier reforms where more substantive changes were made to the CAP, the factors that induced the policy discussions in 2008-13 and those that influenced the decision-making did not reinforce each other. On the contrary, they sometimes counteracted one another, yielding an ‘imperfect storm’ as it were, resulting in more status quo and fewer changes. This book discusses the outcome of the decision-making and the factors that influenced the policy choices and decisions. It brings together contributions from leading academics from various disciplines and policy-makers, and key participants in the process from the European Commission and the European Parliament.

Author: Barry K. Goodwin
Publisher: American Enterprise Institute
ISBN: 9780844739083
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
This study is the first to provide a comprehensive and in-depth economic analysis of the origins and consequences of U.S. crop insurance and disaster relief programs. The authors investigate the policy options for disaster assistance and crop insurance, beginning with the recognition that current policies are unsatisfactory.

Author: Charalampos Mavroutsikos
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781392617571
Category : Crop insurance
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This dissertation develops a novel theoretical framework of heterogeneous producers to analyze the system-wide market and welfare effects of crop insurance and the determinants of the optimal policy design under alterative information structures and government policy objectives. The framework captures the empirically relevant differences in producer attitudes towards risk and their impact on crop insurance participation under different insurance contracts and premium subsidies. The explicit consideration of producer heterogeneity enables also the proper identification and disaggregation of the distributional impacts of crop insurance, and the evaluation of the role of multiple contracts and premium subsidies in policy design. Analytical results indicate that producer welfare gains from crop insurance increase with the level of producer risk aversion and insurance coverage. The provision of different crop insurance contracts results in a separating equilibrium, where different producer groups choose different contracts. The disaggregated welfare impacts of changes in contract availability are determined by the relative differences in premium rates and reduction in risk exposure among the insurance options. Changes in premium subsidies are shown to cause contract-specific participation and welfare changes, with asymmetric benefits for the different policy participants. Regarding the optimal policy design, the study identifies (a) the determinants of the optimal level of premium subsidies and (b) their role in coping with informational asymmetries, under different objectives and political preferences of the government. The analysis shows how premium subsidies can be utilized to induce producer behavior leading to a desired separating equilibrium and presents an alternative policy design that can more efficiently achieve the government objective of increased producer participation in crop insurance. Finally, by utilizing highly detailed crop insurance data, the study empirically tests and quantifies the system-wide effects of crop insurance, the impact of premium subsidies on participants' welfare, and identifies crop and regional differences. Empirical results are consistent with/support the theoretical findings indicating that producer benefits from crop insurance increase with the level of producer risk aversion, high coverage and regional riskiness. The change in the magnitude of premium subsidies in 2000 resulted in increased producer welfare and spatial differences in private insurers' returns.