Goodwin, Barry K.

May, 2019

How High the Hedge: Relationships between Prices and Yields in the Federal Crop Insurance Program

By: Ramsey, A. Ford; Goodwin, Barry K.; Ghosh, Sujit K.
The theory of the natural hedge states that agricultural yields and prices are inversely related. Actuarial rules for U.S. crop revenue insurance assume that dependence between yield and price is constant across all counties within a state and that dependence can be adequately described by the Gaussian copula. We use nonlinear measures of association and a selection of bivariate copulas to empirically characterize spatially-varying dependence between prices and yields and examine premium rate sensitivity for all corn producing counties in the United States. A simulation analysis across copula types and parameter values exposes hypothetical impacts of actuarial changes.
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May, 2015

Accounting for Weather Probabilities in Crop Insurance Rating

By: Rejesus, Roderick M.; Coble, Keith H.; Miller, Mary France; Boyles, Ryan; Goodwin, Barry K; Knight, Thomas O.
This article develops a procedure for weighting historical loss cost experience based on longer time-series weather information. Using a fractional logit model and out-of-sample competitions, weather variables are selected to construct an index that allows proper assessment of the relative probability of weather events that drive production losses and to construct proper “weather weights” that are used in averaging historical loss cost data. A variable-width binning approach with equal probabilities is determined as the best approach for classifying each year in the shorter historical loss cost data used for rating. When the weather-weighting approach described above is applied, we find that the weather-weighted average loss costs at the national level are different from the average loss costs without weather weighting for all crops examined.
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December, 2011

An Empirical Investigation of the Linkages between Government Payments and Farmland Leasing Arrangements

By: Qiu, Feng; Goodwin, Barry K.; Gervais, Jean-Philippe
This article investigates the impacts of decoupled and coupled program payments on farmland rental contract choices for a subset of U.S. crop farms using a principal-agent model.We consider cash and share contracts as well as hybrid contracts, which represent an increasingly prominent feature of U.S. agriculture. The conceptual framework suggests that restrictions on payments between contracting parties are ineffective and induce an offsetting contractual rearrangement. Empirical results from a multinomial logit model confirm that government support programs have large, significant effects on contract choices and that these effects vary by types of programs.
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April, 2011

Modeling Yield Risk Under Technological Change: Dynamic Yield Distributions and the U.S. Crop Insurance Program

By: Zhu, Ying; Goodwin, Barry K.; Ghosh, Sujit K.
The objective of this study is to evaluate the risk associated with major agricultural commodity yields in the United States. We are particularly concerned with the nonstationary nature of the yield distribution, which arises primarily as a result of technological progress and changing environmental conditions over time. In contrast to common two-stage methods, we propose an alternative parametric model that allows the moments of yield distributions to change with time. Several model selection techniques suggest the proposed time-varying model outperforms more conventional models in terms of in-sample goodness-of-fit, out-of-sample predictive power, and the prediction accuracy of insurance premium rates.
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December, 2010

Quality Risk and Profitability in Cattle Production: A Multivariate Approach

By: Belasco, Eric J.; Schroeder, Ted C.; Goodwin, Barry K.
This study evaluates quality, production, and price risk within the context of overall profit variability in fed cattle production. The approach used offers a flexible way to estimate a large system of equations with more than three jointly related censored outcomes. Trade-offs between quality and yield grade levels and production measures, such as average daily gain and feeding efficiency, are evaluated. Simulation procedures are used to assess the impact of quality risk on overall profit variability. Results make an important contribution to existing research by explaining why price signals through grid quality grade premiums may not generate intended producer responses.
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August, 2009

Harvest-Time Protein Shocks and Price Adjustment in U.S. Wheat Markets

By: Goodwin, Barry K.; Smith, Vincent H.
Dynamic relationships among three classes of wheat are investigated using threshold VAR models that incorporate the effects of protein availability. Changes in the stock of protein are found to generate significant responses in the prices of hard red spring wheat and hard red winter wheat, but not soft red wheat. The responses to identical changes in protein stocks are larger when the magnitudes of deviations of protein stocks from normal levels are large. Shocks to the prices of individual classes of wheat result in complex responses in the prices of the other wheat classes. Notably, however, a shock to the price of hard red winter wheat appears to result in little or no response in the price of hard spring wheat, though importantly, the opposite is not true.
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December, 2008

Spatio-temporal Risk and Severity Analysis of Soybean Rust in the United States

By: Bekkerman, Anton; Goodwin, Barry K.; Piggott, Nicholas E.
Soybean rust is a highly mobile infectious disease and can be transmitted across short and long distances. Soybean rust is estimated to cause yield losses that can range between 1%-25%. An analysis of spatio-temporal infection risks within the United States is performed through the use of a unique data set. Observations from over 35,000 field-level inspections between 2005 and 2007 are used to conduct a county-level analysis. Statistical inferences are derived by employing zero-inflated Poisson and negative binomial models. In addition, the model is adjusted to account for potential endogeneity between inspections and soybean rust finds. Past soybean rust finds and inspections in the county and in the surrounding counties, weather and overwintering conditions, and plant maturity groups and planting dates are all found to be significant factors determining soybean rust. These results are then used to accordingly price annual insurance contracts or indemnification programs that cover soybean rust damages.
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August, 2003

An Ex Post Evaluation of the Conservation Reserve, Federal Crop Insurance, and Other Government Programs: Program Participation and Soil Erosion

By: Smith, Vincent H.; Goodwin, Barry K.
Recent research has questioned the extent to which government policies, including conservation and risk management programs, have influenced environmental indicators. The impacts of income-supporting and risk management programs on soil erosion are considered. An econometric model of the determinants of soil erosion, program participation, conservation effort, and input usage is estimated. While the Conservation Reserve Program has reduced erosion an average of 1.02 tons per acre from 1982 to 1992, approximately half of this reduction has been offset by increased erosion resulting from government programs other than federally subsidized crop insurance.
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July, 2000

MEASUREMENT OF PRICE RISK IN REVENUE INSURANCE: IMPLICATIONS OF DISTRIBUTIONAL ASSUMPTIONS

By: Goodwin, Barry K.; Roberts, Matthew C.; Coble, Keith H.
A variety of crop revenue insurance programs have recently been introduced. A critical component of revenue insurance contracts is quantifying the risk associated with stochastic prices. Forward-looking, market-based measures of price risk which are often available in form of options premia are preferable. Because such measures are not available for every crop, some current revenue insurance programs alternatively utilize historical price data to construct measures of price risk. This study evaluates the distributional implications of alternative methods for estimating price risk and deriving insurance premium rates. A variety of specification tests are employed to evaluate distributional assumptions. Conditional heteroskedasticity models are used to determine the extent to which price distributions may be characterized by nonconstant variances. In addition, these models are used to identify variables which may be used for conditioning distributions for rating purposes. Discrete mixtures of normals provide flexible parametric specifications capable of recognizing the skewness and kurtosis present in commodity prices
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December, 1994

PREMIUM RATE DETERMINATION IN THE FEDERAL CROP INSURANCE PROGRAM: WHAT DO AVERAGES HAVE TO SAY ABOUT RISK?

By: Goodwin, Barry K.
This article reviews actuarial procedures used to calculate premium rates in the federal crop insurance program. Average yields are used as an important indicator of risk under current rating practices. The strength and validity of this relationship is examined using historical yield data drawn from a large sample of Kansas farms. The results indicate that assumed relationships between average yields and yield variation are tenuous and imply that rating procedures that rely on average yields may induce adverse selection.
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December, 1993

QUANTIFYING THE EFFECTS OF NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF LOW-FAT GROUND BEEF

By: Brester, Gary W.; Lhermite, Pascale; Goodwin, Barry K.; Hunt, Melvin C.
Low-fat ground beef (LFGB) is a new product designed to be as palatable as beef products that contain significantly higher levels of fat. A hedonic model shows that each unitary increase in the leanness of ground beef products carries a price premium of $.0206/lb. If LFGB garners a 10% share of the ground beef market, the retail price of all ground beef products will increase by $.01/lb. and consumption will increase by 39.75 million lbs. The price of commercial cows will increase by $.56/cwt. Price quantity, and welfare measures are magnified as the market share captured by LFGB increases.
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July, 1992

AN ANALYSIS OF FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH CONSUMERS’ USE OF GROCERY COUPONS

By: Goodwin, Barry K.
A conceptual model of grocery coupon usage is developed and maximum likelihood estimates of a Tobit model are used to assess the influence of several economic and demographic variables on consumers' use of grocery coupons. Specific factors considered include income, age, household size, race, education, shopping practices, and size and composition of grocery transactions. The analysis includes a combination of scanner and survey data collected from 1,047 consumers. Results confirm strong effects for household size, race, shopping practices, and size and composition of grocery transactions.
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