Designing Optimal Crop Revenue Insurance

When the indemnity schedule is contingent on the farmer's price and individual yield, an optimal crop revenue insurance contract depends only on the farmer's gross revenue. However, this design is not efficient if, as is the case with available contracts, the coverage function is based on imperfect estimators of individual yield and/or price. The producer's degree of prudence and the extent of basis risks have important influences on the optimal indemnity schedule. In this broader context, optimal protection is not provided by available U.S. crop insurance contracts and may include combinations of revenue insurance, yield insurance, futures, and options contracts.     

Factors Influencing Farmers' Crop Insurance Decisions

Farmers' decisions to purchase crop insurance and their choices among alternative products are analyzed using a two-stage estimation procedure. The influences of risk perceptions, competing risk management options, as well structural and demographic differences are evaluated. The likelihood for crop insurance usage is found to be higher for larger, older, less tenured, more highly leveraged farms, and by those with higher perceived yield risks. The marginal effects of size, age, perceived yield risk, perceived importance of risk management activities, and other structural and demographic variables are identified in terms of their influences on choices among alternative crop insurance products.     

Crop Insurance Valuation under Alternative Yield Distributions

Considerable disagreement exists about the most appropriate characterization of farm-level yield distributions. Yet, the economic importance of alternative yield distribution specifications on crop insurance valuation has not been well documented. The results of this study demonstrate that large differences in expected payouts from popular crop insurance products can arise solely from the parameterization chosen to represent yield distributions. The results suggest that the frequently unexamined yield distribution specification may lead to economically significant errors in crop insurance policy rating and assessment of expected payouts from policies.     

Is There a Viable Market for Area-Based Crop Insurance?

The performance of area yield insurance and farm-level multiple peril crop insurance is analyzed for cotton and soybean production in Georgia and South Carolina. The analysis improves on many previous studies by utilizing actual farm-level yield data and by comparing the two types of insurance products not only for actuarially fair premium rates but also for actual unsubsidized and subsidized premium rates. Results suggest that, even in heterogeneous production regions, area yield insurance may be a viable alternative to farm-level insurance when premium rates for farm-level insurance contain large positive wedges.     

Optimal Area-Yield Crop Insurance Reconsidered

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 Mahul's result that optimality requires setting the slope of the indemnity schedule equal to each farmer's beta is confirmed. When there is asymmetric information between the insurer and the farmer, however, this full-insurance contract is vulnerable to adverse selection, and therefore may not be implementable for general cost structures. The optimal area-yield insurance contract under asymmetric information is characterized.     

Developing Experience-Based Premium Rate Discounts in Crop Insurance

This article addresses the feasibility of implementing an experience-based premium rate discount system in crop insurance. While adverse selection and moral hazard in crop insurance have been extensively studied in the past, discount systems or bonus–malus incentives have not, to our knowledge, been investigated. Our empirical analysis indicates that a crop insurance discount system could be implemented based on a measure of favorable past insurance experience. The estimated average discounts based on the rating methods developed in this study ranged from 5% to 9% (depending on the crop being considered).     

An Empirical Analysis of Acreage Effects of Participation in the Federal Crop Insurance Program

The extent to which crop insurance programs have resulted in additional land being brought into production has been a topic of considerable debate. We consider multiequation structural models of acreage response, insurance participation, CRP enrollment, and input usage. Our analysis focuses on corn and soybean production in the Corn Belt and wheat and barley production in the Upper Great Plains. Our results confirm that increased participation in insurance programs provokes statistically significant acreage responses in some cases, though the response is very modest in every case. In the most extreme cases, 30% decreases in premiums as a result of increased subsidies provoke acreage increases ranging from 0.2% to 1.1%. A number of policy simulations involving increases in premium subsidies are considered.     

Aggregation in Area-Yield Crop Insurance: The Linear Additive Model

Previous analyses of area yield crop insurance have used a linear additive model (LAM) to express the relationship between individual and area yield. However, the theoretical foundations of the LAM are unknown. This shortcoming is addressed by establishing two conditions linking microvariables and LAM parameters. The conditions relate to the interaction of risks in individual technologies and the extent of aggregation. If systemic and individual risks are additive in individual yields, and if the law of large numbers hold, then the LAM obtains. This article also shows how departures from these conditions affect the results derived from a LAM analysis.     

Actuarial Fairness of Crop Insurance Rates with Constant Rate Relativities

Increased availability and demand for low-deductible crop insurance policies have increased focus on crop insurance rating methods. Actuarial fairness cannot be achieved if constant multiplicative factors are used to determine how premiums change as coverage levels increase. A comparison of premium rates generated by the factors used by the two most popular crop insurance products with those generated by a standard yield distribution shows that the popular insurance products overcharge for low-deductible policies in most counties. This overpricing may explain why large premium subsidies were required to induce farmers to move from low-deductible to high-deductible policies beginning in 2001.     

论地质灾害风险与保险

地质灾害风险特征和我国地质灾害救助体制决定了保险是地质灾害风险管理的有效手段。利用保险学理论对地质灾害风险进行分析可知地质灾害风险基本符合可保险条件,具有可保性。根据中国的具体国情、地质灾害保险需求还是较大的,因而地质灾害保险市场是有发展前景的,目前的问题主要是地质灾害保险供给不足,研究建立适合中国国情的地质灾害保险机制并将其纳入地质灾害补偿体系,意义重大。     

Crop Insurance in a Political Economy: An Alternative Perspective on Agricultural Policy

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.     

Share Tenancy, Ownership Structure, and Prevented Planting Claims in Crop Insurance

A conceptual model based on opportunity cost and expected utility principles establishes linkages between the likelihood of prevented planting claims in crop insurance and existing share leasing arrangements/internal farm business structures. Results of heteroskedastic probit estimation procedures indicate that simpler internal business structures and more dominant farmer–tenant leasing position can increase the probability of submitting a prevented planting claim.     

Estimating the Prevalence and Cost of Yield-Switching Fraud in the Federal Crop Insurance Program

Producers who manipulate and switch their reported crop-yields between separately insured units can increase their insurance indemnities substantially. A statistical model that identifies potential yield switching is developed. The unrestricted statistical model is singular and is identified by imposing a mixture of system-estimable and system-nonestimable restrictions. Lower bound estimates of yield-switching fraud incidence and costs are obtained by applying the model to 207,067 multiple unit producers who purchased crop insurance in 1998.     

Tests for the Role of Risk Aversion on Input Use

For risk-averting agents, risks alter production decisions while the existence of institutions to insure against adverse states of nature will likely restore decisions toward levels under risk neutrality. In this article, conditions are identified on a stochastic technology to test   H^rn _0,≤  : that risk averters choose smaller input levels than risk neutral agents, and   H^ra _0,≤  : that an increase in risk aversion reduces input use. A robust statistical method to test for dominance is adapted to stochastic production relations. It is found that   H^rn _0,≤  is likely true for nitrogen application on Iowa corn. Weaker evidence is found in favor of   H^ra _0,≤  .     

Crop Yield Skewness Under Law of the Minimum Technology

No satisfactory motivation has been forwarded in favor of any crop yield distribution, including the normal. This article explores the foundations of yield distributions for the Law of the Minimum resource constraint technology at the plot level of analysis. With independent, identical, uniform resource availability distributions the yield skew is positive, whereas it is negative whenever the distributions are normal. Simulations show how asymmetries in resource availabilities determine skewness. It is suggested that a negative yield skew occurs whenever production is tightly controlled so that the left tails of some resources availabilities distributions are thin. Irrigation may increase yield skewness.     

Constrained Efficient Contracts for Area Yield Crop Insurance

With area yield crop insurance, indemnification occurs when area yield falls below a yield trigger that is chosen by the producer. The maximum value for this yield trigger is generally restricted (e.g., 80% of the long term area average yield). The impact of this trigger constraint on the optimal design of an area yield insurance contract is examined. Within the constrained efficient contract, indemnities consist of both a lump sum payment and a payment that is proportional to the yield shortfall. Because lump sum payments may not be feasible to implement, efficiency-enhancing modifications to standard contracts are also proposed.     

Optimal Producer Behavior in the Presence of Area-Yield Crop Insurance

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 area-yield insurance to increase the riskiness of the individual producer's decisions are derived. A separation result is derived for area-yield insurance contracts and stochastic technologies.     

Pre-Harvest Price Expectations for Corn: The Information Content of USDA Reports and New Crop Futures

This article examines the puzzle of why futures prices continue to react to USDA crop reports despite the fact that reports appear to be no longer newsworthy, that is, provide no better production estimates than private forecasts. The information value of reports is measured in terms of their influence on rational agents' harvest-time corn price expectations, which are uncovered using a Hamilton-type modeling approach. Results show that reports are still newsworthy, as they would contribute to agents' price expectations if released a day early. Thus futures price reactions, which closely reflect price expectations, are rational and consistent with efficient markets hypothesis.     

Private Crop Insurers and the Reinsurance Fund Allocation Decision

This research investigates the strategic behavior of private crop insurance firms reinsured by the USDA through the Standard Reinsurance Agreement. This arrangement allows the private firm to strategically allocate individual policies into different risk-sharing arrangements. Thus, firm earnings are conditioned upon accurately forecasting policy loss experience. Our analysis begins with models investigating the characteristics explaining the placement of policies into the assigned risk fund. Then a simulation model of the SRA is used to compare the post-SRA returns of actual firm allocations to two alternative allocation strategies based on a aggregate models and a policy-level econometric forecasting model.     

浅析中国渔业保险模式的选择

随着中国渔业的快速发展,对渔业风险保障体系的构建提出了迫切要求,而渔业保险是市场经济条件下保障渔业生产经营活动稳定性的有效途径。本文从中国渔业保险的经营现状着手,指出中国目前还没有适合自身的渔业保险模式,在分析对比世界上存在着的六种渔业保险模式和参考中国保监会提出的五种农业保险模式的基础上,首次提出适合中国国情的新模式,即渔业相互保险公司经营渔业原保险,商业保险公司经营渔业再保险的渔业保险经营模式,并对该模式的构建进行了初步探索。