The Dynamics of Agricultural Insurance and Consumption Smoothing

Most of the existing studies evaluating performance of market-based agricultural risk management instruments, are based on static, two-period models in which hedging or insurance is undertaken in the first period and all uncertainty is resolved in the second period. In reality, risk management decisions are undertaken in a multi-period, dynamic environment in which decisions in any period can affect outcomes in other periods. Once the modeling environment becomes truly dynamic, things can change substantially. This book focuses on interaction between farmer insurance decisions and their borrowing and saving decisions in a multi-period dynamic model. This type of interaction has not been comprehensively addressed in existing literature. In this book, a simple stochastic dynamic model is developed and solved for a risk-averse farmer using revenue insurance to manage risk and, also borrows and lends subject to a credit constraint. The analysis provides new insights into inter-temporal risk management behavior of farmers. It also suggests reasons why the effective demand for agricultural insurance may be much lower than that predicted by simple static models of agricultural insurance.