IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/uerser/308267.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Alternative for Reducing Federal Crop Insurance Program Losses

Author

Listed:
  • Glauber, Joseph W.
  • Harwood, Joy L.
  • Skees, Jerry R.

Abstract

The Federal crop insurance program saw indemnities exceed premiums by $2.5 billion in the 1980's, a decade of widespread drought and rapid growth in insurance participation. This excess loss, after small surpluses for most of the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation's history, masks the wide variation in performance among crops and regions. More than half of program excess losses were for soybeans (mostly those produced in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi) and wheat (mostly that produced in Montana and North Dakota). An alternative method of crop insurance, with payments based on yield losses in a geographic area rather than those experienced by individual producers, may help to reduce excess losses. A pilot program using such a method is being tested for soybeans.

Suggested Citation

  • Glauber, Joseph W. & Harwood, Joy L. & Skees, Jerry R., 1993. "An Alternative for Reducing Federal Crop Insurance Program Losses," Agricultural Economic Reports 308267, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:uerser:308267
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.308267
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/308267/files/aer668.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.308267?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jerry R. Skees & Michael R. Reed, 1986. "Rate Making for Farm-Level Crop Insurance: Implications for Adverse Selection," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 68(3), pages 653-659.
    2. Carl H. Nelson & Edna T. Loehman, 1987. "Further Toward a Theory of Agricultural Insurance," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 69(3), pages 523-531.
    3. Harold G. Halcrow, 1949. "Actuarial Structures for Crop Insurance," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 31(3), pages 418-443.
    4. Glauber, Joseph W. & Harwood, Joy L. & Miranda, Mario J., 1989. "Federal Crop Insurance and the 1990 Farm Bill: An Assessment of Program Options," Staff Reports 278249, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    5. Barnaby, Glenn Arthur, Jr. & Skees, Jerry R., 1990. "PUBLIC POLICY FOR CATASTROPIDC YIELD RISK: An Alternative Crop Insurance Program," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 5(2), pages 1-3.
    6. Mario J. Miranda, 1991. "Area-Yield Crop Insurance Reconsidered," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 73(2), pages 233-242.
    7. Robert G. Chambers, 1989. "Insurability and Moral Hazard in Agricultural Insurance Markets," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 71(3), pages 604-616.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Skees, Jerry R., 1993. "Thepouticaleconomy Of A Crop Insurance Experiment," Research Bulletins 123021, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Just, Richard E. & Calvin, Linda, 1994. "Adverse Selection in U.S. Crop Insurance: The Relationship of Farm Characteristics to Expected Indemnities," Working Papers 197808, University of Maryland, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    2. Gong, Xuche & Feng, Hongli & Hennessy, David A., 2018. "Systemic Risk, Geography and Area Insurance," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274479, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Mason, Charles Edwin, IV, 2000. "Estimation and attenuation of reinsurance risk in the crop insurance market," ISU General Staff Papers 2000010108000013703, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    4. Gustafson, Cole R. & Crane, Laurence M. & Fischer, William R., 1995. "Agronomic, Economic, and Demographic Characteristics of Crop Farms in the Great Plains and Corn Belt," Agricultural Economics Reports 23221, North Dakota State University, Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics.
    5. Heidelbach, Olaf, 2007. "Efficiency of selected risk management instruments: An empirical analysis of risk reduction in Kazakhstani crop production," Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Transition Economies, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), volume 40, number 92323.
    6. Mahul, Olivier & Vermersch, Dominique, 1999. "Hedging Crop Risk With Yield Insurance Futures And Options," 1999 Annual meeting, August 8-11, Nashville, TN 21672, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    7. Smith, Vincent H. & Chouinard, Hayley H. & Baquet, Alan E., 1994. "Almost Ideal Area Yield Crop Insurance Contracts," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 23(1), pages 1-9, April.
    8. Richard E. Just & Linda Calvin & John Quiggin, 1999. "Adverse Selection in Crop Insurance: Actuarial and Asymmetric Information Incentives," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 81(4), pages 834-849.
    9. Olivier Mahul, 1997. "The design of an optimal area yield crop insurance contract," Post-Print hal-01952129, HAL.
    10. Zhang Dongling & Yang Zehui, 2015. "Adverse Selection Risk Early-Warning of Agricultural Insurance Towards Food Quality Safety — Illustrated by an example of vegetable sites in Shandong province," Journal of Systems Science and Information, De Gruyter, vol. 3(3), pages 248-263, June.
    11. Olivier Mahul, 1998. "Vers une redéfinition du rôle de l’assurance agricole dans la gestion des risques sur récoltes," Post-Print hal-01200910, HAL.
    12. Carriker, Gordon L. & Williams, Jeffery R. & Barnaby, Glenn Arthur, Jr. & Black, J. Roy, 1990. "Risk Reduction Under An Area Yield-Based Crop Insurance Plan for Southcentral Kansas Winter Wheat," Staff Papers 133756, Kansas State University, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    13. Calum G. Turvey & Zahirul Islam, 1995. "Equity and efficiency considerations in area versus individual yield insurance," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 12(1), pages 23-35, April.
    14. Zhang, Li, 2008. "Three essays on agricultural risk and insurance," ISU General Staff Papers 2008010108000016857, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    15. Bokusheva, Raushan, 2004. "Crop insurance in transition: a qualitative and quantitative assessment of insurance products," IAMO Discussion Papers 76, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO).
    16. Olivier Mahul, 1998. "Vers une redéfinition du rôle de l’assurance agricole dans la gestion des risques sur récoltes," Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurales, INRA Department of Economics, vol. 49, pages 33-58.
    17. Bokusheva, Raushan, 2004. "Crop insurance in transition: A qualitative and quantitative assessment of insurance products (Preliminary results)," IAMO Discussion Papers 14869, Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO).
    18. Mahul, Olivier, 1998. "Vers une redéfinition du rôle de l’assurance agricole dans la gestion des risques sur récoltes," Cahiers d'Economie et de Sociologie Rurales (CESR), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), vol. 49.
    19. Carriquiry, Miguel A. & Osgood, Daniel E., 2006. "Index Insurance, Production Practices, and Probabilistic Climate Forecasts," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21463, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    20. Yehouenou, Lauriane S. M. & Barnett, Barry J. & Harri, Ardian & Coble, Keith H., 2016. "An Analysis of Factors Affecting Bias and Inefficiency in Area Yield Indexes Based on Aggregated Farm Yields," 2016 Annual Meeting, February 6-9, 2016, San Antonio, Texas 230081, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:uerser:308267. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ersgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.