Epperson, James E.

August, 2009

By: Escalante, Cesar L.; Epperson, James E.; Raghunathan, Uthra
This study analyzes the courts’ denial of women farmers’ motion for class-action certification of their lawsuits alleging gender discrimination in Farm Service Agency (FSA) lending decisions. The plaintiffs’ claim of “commonality” of circumstances in women farmers’ dealings with FSA is tested using a four-year sampling of Georgia FSA loan applications. The econometric framework has been developed after accounting for the separability of loan approval and amount decisions, as well as endogeneity issues through instrumental variable estimation. This study’s results do not produce overwhelming evidence of gender bias in FSA loan approval decisions and in favor of the “commonality” argument among Georgia FSA farm loan applicants.

August, 2006

By: Vedenov, Dmitry V.; Epperson, James E.; Barnett, Barry J.
This article makes an initial attempt to design catastrophe (CAT) bond products for agriculture and examines the potential of these instruments as mechanisms for transferring agricultural risks from insurance companies to investors/speculators in the global capital market. The case of Georgia cotton is considered as a specific example. The CAT bond contracts are based on percentage deviations of realized state average yields relative to the long-run average. The contracts are priced using historical state-level cotton yield data. The principal finding of the study is that the proposed CAT bonds demonstrate potential as risk transfer mechanisms for crop insurance companies.