Food risks may be caused by moral hazard, i.e. by opportunisticbehaviour of upstream sellers who exploit the fact that many foodproduct qualities remain uncertain to downstream buyers in thecourse of conventional market transactions (credence qualities).Due to this lack of market transparency...

Since the mid-nineties, agricultural economists discuss the suitability of “weather derivatives” as hedging instruments for volumetric risks in agriculture. Contrary to traditional insurance contracts, the payoffs of such derivatives are linked to weather indices (e.g. accumulated rainfall...