Managing Risk in Agriculture: A Development Perspective

The book addresses and documents farmers' risks in developing and emerging economies. It draws lessons from experimental economics on measuring risk preferences, attitudes, gender differences in managing risks, and risk management strategies in countries across Africa and Asia. It argues policy makers, especially in emerging economies, need a better understanding of farmers' attitudes toward risk and choices of risk management strategies when designing policies to support production agriculture. The book includes chapters on three themes: understanding risk attitudes and preferences; using experimental economics to measure risk, preferences, and risk management strategies; and understanding climate change, risk, and risk management. The book critically examines the currently held beliefs about risk preference, attitudes, and empirical estimation of risk management strategies, emphasizing developing and emerging economies (DEE). "The agricultural development space is an inherently risky one and this welcome collection belatedly helps to plug an important hole." Jock R. Anderson, Emeritus Professor of Agricultural Economics, University of New England, Armidale, Australia "Over time, agricultural production practices have evolved, as have the markets and value chains for food and agricultural products. A constant consideration, however, and one that continues to define agriculture worldwide, is risk. The risks that impinge on agriculture come in all shapes and sizes. Of course, production risks are ubiquitous. But so are market risks. And the same is true for macroeconomic and financial risks and the risks associated with an evolving climate. This book will be a valuable, comprehensive resource for any applied economist desiring to understand the risk management principles relevant to modern food and agricultural systems." Matthew Holt, Prof. and head of the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, VA, USA.

Ashok K. Mishra is Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation Chair in Food Management, Morrison School of Agribusiness, W. P. Carey School of Business, at the Arizona State University, USA, where he conducts research and teaching activities in public policy, finance, agribusiness, food security. He assumed a leadership role in the agricultural economics profession by serving as either an editor and/or associate editor for six journals in addition to service work for the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA). He has presented his work to non-academics such as USDA Secretary, OECD, National Public Policy Education Committee, the National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education, and Economics Advisory Board, and key policymakers from the Office of Management and Budget, Council of Economic Advisors. Mishra received a Ph.D. in Economics at North Carolina State University in 1996. Previously he has held positions at Louisiana State University, and the Economic Research Service of the USDA. His international work is in collaboration with IFPRI, IRRI, CIMMYT and ICRISAT. Ashok is Fellow of AAEA (2022); Fellow of WAEA (2020); Fellow of NAREA (2013). 2022 Fellow, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), India.

Subal C. Kumbhakar received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Southern California in 1986. He started teaching at the University of Texas in 1986 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Professor in 2000. He joined Binghamton University, SUNY in 2001. He was awarded University Distinguished Professor in Economics in December 2005. He teaches graduate econometrics (both theory and applied), and undergraduate microeconomics, statistics, and econometrics courses. He also taught at the Burdwan University, India as a Lecturer in Economics from 1977-1981.Subal's main area of research is applied microeconomics with a focus on estimation of efficiency in production. He uses production, cost, and profit function approaches to estimate economic efficiency. He has formulated a variety of panel data models to measure efficiency, which he has applied to a wide variety of topics covering agriculture, manufacturing, banking, airlines, electricity generation/distribution, public sector enterprises, etc. His recent works include environmental efficiency, modelling undesirable outputs. Some of his other research areas include: corruption and economic growth, foreign direct investment, adverse selection and moral hazards, risk and risk preference in agriculture and aquaculture. His current research includes semi and nonparametric panel data models with and without efficiency. Subal is a Fellow of Journal of Econometrics (1998). He holds an Honorary Doctorate degree (Doctor Honoris Causa) from Gothenburg University, Sweden (1997). Subal is currently a co-editor of Empirical Economics. He is serving as a Board of Editors and/or associate editors of Journal of Productivity Analysis since 1998, Technological Forecasting and Social Change: An International Journal since 1991, International Journal of Business and Economics since 2002, Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics since 2014, Journal of Regulatory Economics since 2015, Macroeconomics and Finance in Emerging Market Economies since 2007, Applied Econometrics since 2016, Ecos de Economia: A Latin American Journal of Applied Economics since 2016.

Gudbrand Lien is a professor in business economics at Inland School of Business and Social Sciences, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences in Lillehammer (in Norway) and senior researcher within agricultural economics at Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO) at Ås (in Norway). Gudbrand has a dr. oecon (PhD) degree (within finance) from Norwegian School of Economics (NHH). His main field of research has been within risk analysis/decision analysis, agricultural economics, energy finance, energy economics, forest economics, dynamic pricing and quantitative innovation studies. He has published about 100 articles in high ranked refereed international journals. Gudbrand is also co-author (joint with J. Brian Hardaker, Jock. R. Anderson and Ruud B.M. Huirne) of the 2nd and 3rd edition of text book "Coping with risk in agriculture", both published at Cabi. Gudbrand has worked closely together with Professor J. Brian Hardaker for more than 20 years, and they have 24 scientific papers together. He has also worked together with Distinguished Professor Subal C. Kumbhakar in the past 15 years and they have written almost 20 scientific papers together. He is a Board Member of Energies since 2019 and European Review of Agricultural Economics from 2022.