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Risk and uncertainty are inescapable factors in agriculture which require careful management. Farmers face production risks from the weather, crop and livestock performance, and pests and diseases, as well as institutional, personal and business risks. This revised third edition of the popular textbook includes updated chapters on theory and methods and contains a new chapter discussing the state-contingent approach to the analysis of production and the use of copulas to better model stochastic dependency. Aiming to introduce agricultural decision making, probability and risk preference, this book is an indispensable guide for students and researchers of agriculture and agribusiness management.
This text is the first major survey of risk analysis from the perspective of the agricultural firms since Agricultural Decision Analysis by Anderson, Dillon, and Hardaker published in 1977. In addition to updating the traditional material from that text, this book includes the statistical foundations of decision making under risk and uncertainty. Adding to the material covered in Anderson, Dillon, and Hardaker, the text includes material on dynamic decision rules, the arbitrage pricing model, real options theory, and state-contingent production relationships. Risk, Uncertainty, and the Agricultural Firm provides a unique discussion of each application ? developing the theoretical basis for each model and presenting an empirical roadmap (or the ?nuts and bolts?) of each model to facilitate the empirical application of each technique.
This guide is intended to help extension workers better understand the concept of risk, the situation where risk occurs and management strategies that can be used to reduce, or at least soften, its effect. It is hoped that the guide will be useful in assisting extension workers to provide farmers with advice on the kind of risk management strategies that they can employ to deal with risk in their day-to-day operations. In this way extension workers can help farmers recognize and understand the risks that they are likely to face and assist them in making better farm management decisions that reduce the negative effect of the risks encountered in farming.
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
1. Introduction. 1.1. Formulating the risk problem. 1.2. Decision criteria. 1.3. Decision making under risk : fact and fiction -- 2. Probability theory - a mathematical basis for making decisions under risk and uncertainty. 2.1. Set theory and probability. 2.2. Random variables. 2.3. Conditional probability and independence. 2.4. Some useful distribution functions. 2.5. Expected value, moments, and the moment generating function. 2.6. Estimating probability functions. 2.7. Martingales and random walks. 2.8. Summary -- 3. Expected utility - the economic basis of decision making under risk. 3.1. Consumption and utility. 3.2. Expected utility. 3.3. Expected value - variance and expected utility models. 3.4. Problems with expected utility. 3.5. Summary -- 4. Risk aversion in the large and small. 4.1. Arrow-Pratt risk aversion coefficient. 4.2. Eliciting risk aversion coefficients. 4.3 Summary -- 5. Portfolio theory and decision making under risk. 5.1. The expected value - variance frontier. 5.2. A simple portfolio. 5.3. A graphical depiction of the expected value-variance frontier. 5.4. Mean-variance versus direct utility maximization. 5.5. Derivation of the expected value-variance frontier. 5.6. Summary -- 6. Whole farm-planning models. 6.1. Farm portfolio models. 6.2. Minimize total absolute deviation. 6.3. Focus-loss. 6.4. Target MOTAD. 6.5. Direct utility maximization. 6.6. Discrete sequential stochastic programming. 6.7. Chance-constrained programming. 6.8. Interpreting shadow values from risk programming models. 6.9. Summary -- 7. Risk efficiency approaches - stochastic dominance. 7.1. Stochastic dominance. 7.2. Applications of stochastic dominance. 7.3. Summary -- 8. Dynamic decision rules and the value of information. 8.1. Decision making and Bayesian probabilities. 8.2. Concepts of information. 8.3. A model of information. 8.4. Summary -- 9. Market models of decision making under risk. 9.1. Risk equilibrium from the consumer's point of view. 9.2. The role of the riskless asset. 9.3. Risk equilibrium from the firm's perspective. 9.4. Arbitrage pricing theorem. 9.5. Empirical applications of capital market models. 9.6. Summary -- 10. Option pricing approaches to risk. 10.1. Introductions to options and futures. 10.2. Real option valuation. 10.3. Crop insurance. 10.4. Summary -- 11. State contingent production model : the stochastic production set. 11.1. Depicting risk and input decisions in the production function. 11.2. State Production set and input requirement set. 11.3. Distance functions and risk aversion. 11.4. Summary -- 12. Risk, uncertainty, and the agricultural firm - a summary and outlook
A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fascinating and pertinent today, this is Frank Knight's famous explanation of why perfect competition cannot eliminate profits, the important differences between "risk" and "uncertainty," and the vital role of the entrepreneur in profitmaking. Based on Knight's PhD dissertation, this 1921 work, balancing theory with fact to come to stunning insights, is a distinct pleasure to read. FRANK H. KNIGHT (1885-1972) is considered by some the greatest American scholar of economics of the 20th century. An economics professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 until 1955, he was one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, which influenced Milton Friedman and George Stigler.
In the midst of a changing economy, most executives continue to use a strategy toolkit designed for yesterday's more stable marketplace. As a result, strategies emerge that neither manage the risks nor take advantage of the opportunities that arise in highly uncertain times. Now, McKinsey shows strategists how to tailor every aspect of the decision-making process-from formulation to implementation-to the level of uncertainty faced, describes the strategic-planning processes readers can use to monitor, update, and revise strategies as necessary in volatile markets, and includes a toolkit for identifying, developing, and testing new strategy options-complete with guidelines for applying the right tool to the right situation at the right time. A comprehensive approach to strategy development under all possible levels of uncertainty and across all kinds of industries, this is the essential guide for making tough strategic choices in a changing world. Hugh Courtney is an Associate Principal with the Global Strategy Practice at McKinsey Company in Washington D.C.
This book is concerned with how people respond to unpredictable variation in environmental and economic conditions (risk) and lack of information (uncertainty) about those risks. The papers focus on tribal and peasant societies. These societies lack many of the formal institutions that we, in the industrialized West, rely on to buffer us against unpredictable resource fluctuations. As the papers in this volume show, people in these societies are directly and profoundly affected by such risks. The contributors to this volume are primarily ecological and economic anthropologists who have in common a familiarity with both the formal theory of behavioral ecology and/or economics and the anthropological literature on tribal and peasant societies.
Risk as we now know it is a wholly new phenomenon, the by-product of our ever more complex and powerful technologies. In business, policy making, and in everyday life, it demands a new way of looking at technological and environmental uncertainty. In this definitive volume, four of the world's leading risk researchers present a fundamental critique of the prevailing approaches to understanding and managing risk - the 'rational actor paradigm'. They show how risk studies must incorporate the competing interests, values, and rationalities of those involved and find a balance of trust and acceptable risk. Their work points to a comprehensive and significant new theory of risk and uncertainty and of the decision making process they require. The implications for social, political, and environmental theory and practice are enormous. Winner of the 2000-2002 Outstanding Publication Award of the Section on Environment and Technology of the American Sociological Association