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. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

Utilizing survey data from corn and soybean farmers in the Midwest, this study assesses the relative importance of different features of crop insurance products. Conjoint analysis results indicate that farmers' preferences for flexibility dominate both type of insurance and coverage level. Revenue insurance demand is greater by those who are larger, younger, and farm in more separate locations. Results are significant and consistent by size, insurance usage, leverage, and risk perception. The results permit prediction of market shares of competing insurance products within specific producer segments, and thus also provide guidance for targeting specific producer groups with new product configurations.

The migration approach to credit risk measurement is based on historic rates of movements of individual loans among the classes of a lender's risk-rating or creditscoring system. This article applies the migration concept to farm-level data from Illinois to estimate migration rates for a farmer's credit score and other performance measures under different time-averaging approaches. Empirical results suggest greater stability in rating migrations for longer time-averaging periods (although less stable than bond migrations), and for the credit score criterion versus ROE and repayment capacity.

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The leasing market for Midwestern farmland is experiencing greater reliance on cash versus share leases and increased competition for leased acreage. This study identifies significant factors associated with the use of cash leases relative to share leases, and with the associated levels of cash rent. A greater likelihood of cash leases is significantly related to higher income variability, lower soil quality, smaller tracts of leased acreage, shorter relationships with landlords, and to farmers with larger net worths and higher debt‐to‐asset ratios. Levels of cash rent are associated primarily with differences in soil productivity, tract size, and net worth.

This paper uses resampling estimation techniques to develop a statistical mathematical programming model for discriminant analysis problems. Deleted-d jackknife, deleted-d bootstrap, and bootstrap procedures are used to identify statistical significant parameter estimates for a discriminant mathematical programming (MP) model. The results of this paper indicate that the resampling approach is a viable model selection technique. Furthermore, estimating the MP models via resampling techniques can also improve the classification performance compared to a deterministic discriminant MP model. In this study, the deleted-d jackknife procedure was the most promising among the resampling estimation techniques examined. Copyright 1997, Oxford University Press.

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Commercial banks are using more comprehensive and formal methods to evaluate agricultural producers. This study reports the characteristics and performance of 87 credit scoring models currently in use by lenders. True product-moment and rank correlations are used to measure consistency among the models. The results of this study underscore the continuing lack of a uniform model or models for lenders to use in evaluating the creditworthiness of agricultural borrowers. The relatively high disparity among the systems now in place suggest informational deficiencies in this aspect of rural credit markets, and the need for further interchange among lenders, borrowers and analysts about the properties of credit scoring models. 0 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Over the past decade, greater precision in credit evaluation of agricultural borrowers has occurred as a result of the farm financial crisis and loan losses of the 1980s, increased competition among lenders, efforts to control lending costs, and improvements in loan information systems. A major evolution in the credit evaluation procedures has been the risk assessment (or credit scoring) of borrowers based on numerical measures of a borrower's financial condition and management ability. These procedures assist lenders with loan approval, loan pricing, loan monitoring, and evaluation of loan portfolio risks. Numerous credit risk Paul N .