Joseph W. Glauber

Systemic Risk, Reinsurance, and the Failure of Crop Insurance Markets

Without affordable reinsurance, private crop insurance markets are doomed to fail because systemic weather effects induce high correlation among farm-level yields, defeating insurer efforts to pool risks across farms. Using an empirical model of the U.S. crop insurance market, we find that U.S. crop insurer portfolios are twenty to fifty times riskier than they would be otherwise if yields were stochastically independent across farms. We also find that area yield reinsurance contracts would enable crop insurers to cover most of their systemic crop loss risk, reducing their risk exposure to levels typically experienced by more conventional property liability insurers. Copyright 1997, Oxford University Press.

Crop insurance, disaster assistance, and the role of the federal government in providing catastrophic risk protection

Since 1980, the principal form of crop loss assistance in the United States has been provided through the Federal Crop Insurance Program. The Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1980 was intended to replace disaster programs with a subsidized insurance program that farmers could depend on in the event of crop losses. Crop insurance was seen as preferable to disaster assistance because it was less costly and hence could be provided to more producers, was less likely to encourage moral hazard, and less likely to encourage producers to plant crops on marginal lands. Despite substantial growth in the program, the crop insurance program has failed to replace other disaster programs as the sole form of assistance. Over the past 20 years, producers received an estimated

Estimation of Dynamic Nonlinear Rational Expectations Models of Primary Commodity Markets with Private and Government Stockholding

15 billion in supplemental disaster payments in addition to

Pricing and Storage of Field Crops: A Quarterly Model Applied to Soybeans

22 billion in crop insurance indemnities.

Evolution of the Economics of Agricultural Policy

Stochastic-dynamic programming and disequilibrium maximum likelihood methods are combined to estimate a dynamic nonlinear rational expectations model of a market for a storable primary commodity. The estimation model captures the inherently nonlinear structure of private stockholding dynamics, the disequilibrium effects of government buffer stock intervention, and the impact of price expectations and risk on private supply and stockholding decisions. Copyright 1993 by MIT Press.

RISK MANAGEMENT AND THE ROLE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

This paper considers the role of competitive storage in markets for annually harvested field crops. A quarterly model is presented that considers the allocative role of storage both within and between crop years. Rational price expectations are endogenous variables calculated by a recursive method. Forward stochastic simulations using the model generate data that can be used to characterize the distributions of the variables. In the base case, the model is assigned parameter values from a quarterly econometric model of the U.S. soybean market. The results shed light on the distributions of the quarterly variables, including the rational price expectations, and show how these distributions are affected by changes in the carrying charge.

Private Crop Insurers and the Reinsurance Fund Allocation Decision

Agricultural economists helped develop farm programs to respond to the dire economic situation of the 1920s and 1930s. Some early authors appreciated that such policies created problems in markets for commodities and inputs. Over time, our understanding of agricultural issues and policies has deepened. Through the application of improved models and tools of analysis to more extensive data, we have developed better answers to old questions, and have responded to changing policy instruments, market contexts, and policy concerns. This article traces the evolution of our deepening economic understanding of the causes and consequences of agricultural policy. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

SOLVING STOCHASTIC MODELS OF COMPETITIVE STORAGE AND TRADE BY CHEBYCHEV COLLOCATON METHODS

One of the key characteristics of agriculture is the inherent production risks facing producers from adverse weather, pests, and diseases. These risks have been used to justify government intervention in the form of disaster assistance payments, emergency loans, livestock feed assistance programs, crop insurance, and other subsidized assistance schemes. Yet while government intervention to provide assistance has been widely supported in the United States, the form of assistance has been much debated.

Providing Crop Disaster Assistance through a Modified Deficiency Payment Program

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.

Four Approaches to Commodity Market Stabilization: A Comparative Analysis

We show how to solve the stochastic spatial-temporal price equilibrium model numerically using the Chebychev collocation method. We then use the model to analyze the joint and interactive stabilizing effects of competitive storage and trade.