The effect of agricultural policy change on income risk in Swiss agriculture

Nadja El Benni, Robert Finger and Stefan Mann ()

No 122532, 123rd Seminar, February 23-24, 2012, Dublin, Ireland from European Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: The study examines the effect of agricultural policy reforms on income variability of Swiss farmers. The observed heterogeneity in income risks across farms and time is explained with farm and regional characteristics. FADN data are used to construct coefficients of variation of total household income and gross revenues at farm-level over the period 1992-2009. Applying linear mixed effect models the effects of off-farm income, direct payments, farm size, specialisation and liquidity on gross revenue and household income variability in three different production regions are measured. The switch from market-based support to direct payments decreased the variability of farm revenues and household income. Off-farm income has a positive and farm size a negative effect on revenue risk. The opposite is true for household income risk. Specialisation increases revenue and household income risk. Direct payments serve as insurance for farmers and make them more willing to take risk from agricultural production.

Keywords: Risk; and; Uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16
Date: 2012-02-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/122532/files/El_Benni.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:eaa123:122532

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.122532

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 123rd Seminar, February 23-24, 2012, Dublin, Ireland from European Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().