Coping with risk in agriculture

Abstract The purpose of the first edition of the book, published in 1997, was to contribute to improved agricultural decision making by explaining what can be done in risk analysis and management. Since 1997 progress has been made in risk analysis in agriculture. The material covered in this second edition has been restructured and most of the 1997 text has been revised. Topics that are more thoroughly dealt with in this edition include: assessing and quantifying the degree of risk aversion of a decision maker; judging how important risk aversion is likely to be in particular circumstances; an improved approach for partially ordering risky stochastic distributions when the decision maker's attitude to risk is not fully known; stochastic simulation and its combination with optimization for the analysis of risky choice; and risk considerations in agricultural policy making. The book is written for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of agricultural economics and farm management, as well as advisers to farmers and agricultural research workers. It has 13 chapters and a subject index.