The paper examines empirical returns from holding thirty- and ninety-day call and put positions, and the forecasting performance of implied volatility in the live and feeder cattle options markets. In both markets, implied volatility is an upwardly biased and inefficient predictor of realized...

Although RDP 2007-2013 expenditures represent less than 20% of total CAP expenditures, this policy is supposed to support rural areas in facing new challenges. Actually, EU rural areas are going through major transformations. Due to the very different development processes that rural areas have...

In EU Countries in the last decade there has been a reduction of the number of farms, combined with a significant increase in their average size. First response to crisis in EU agriculture is the enhancement the competitiveness of farms in bio-economy issues, i.e. quality: EU farmers must build...

This article examines the impact of non-farm work on household welfare, differentiated by female, for rural households in the Punjab province of Pakistan. We employ an endogenous switching regression approach that accounts for selection bias due to observable and unobservable factors to examine...

The goal of this report is to provide the Illinois Livestock industry with an economic snapshot of the current state of the industry. The State’s livestock and meat and dairy processing sectors significantly contribute to the state’s economy in three important ways: 1) significant economic...

We analyse the determinants of off-farm labour participation of farmers, an issue relevant in view of the agricultural sector coping with increasing productivity and in terms of rural development. We apply a farm-household theoretical model. The data for the empirical analysis are a 5 year...

The main goal of this paper is to develop a methodology to quantitatively assess resilience to food insecurity. The developed methodology is applied to Nicaraguan rural households hit by Mitch Hurricane in 1999. The results show that the proposed resilience index is a good predictor of...

During the last decade, the Niger’s population has been affected by the food crisis (2001, 2004-2005, 2008, 2010-2011). Each year, she is subjected to many structural and temporary shocks. The structural shocks are caused by the chronicle difficulties (income) while the temporary shocks are...