Weekly Departmental Seminar- Environmental Economics and Management

Date: 7.11.2021

Speaker: Tom Cromsjo

Affiliation: Hebrew University

Bio: Tom Cromsjo is a M.Sc student at the  Department of Environmental Economics and Management . His work has been supervised by Prof.  Israel Finkelshtain  & Prof.  Iddo Kan

Subject: Estimation of Farmers' Risk Attitudes from Insurance Policy Choices

Abstract: We use a multi-stage conditional logit model to estimate farmers’ risk and risk preferences based on their choice of an insurance policy. Because mandatory insurance against natural events (hail, floods, etc.) has been implemented in the Israeli citrus industry since 2004, we are able to use almost the entire universe of Israeli citrus farmers between 2004-2016 in our estimation. We find that farmers in kibbutzim and moshavim are more risk-averse than those in other sectors. In addition, we find that farmers who started purchasing insurance before mandatory insurance began are more risk-averse but aren’t riskier than newer policy-holders. These findings can help disentangle the reasons behind the relatively low participation in voluntary agricultural insurance programs in Israel and other countries.

The Seminar meeting will take place on Sunday, at 13:15pm – 14:00 5pm, at the Agricultural Economics Seminar Room, Volcani Building, floor 1.

The talk will be given in Hebrew.