The factors affecting the demand for agricultural insurance in the USA have been extensively studied over the last two decades. However, the determinants of a farm's entry and exit decisions in the ...insurance market have received relatively little attention. Turnover in the insurance book of business is an important issue in most private and public crop insurance plans. Moreover, insurance markets in the EU are still largely under‐investigated. We investigate empirically the determinants of crop insurance participation in Italy. We show that the participation rate is high for large firms and that it is negatively correlated with crop diversification, which is itself a form of insurance. High premiums tend to inhibit both entry and exit from the insurance market. Larger and wealthier farms are more likely to adopt insurance and renew coverage over time. We discuss implications of our results for public intervention and the private industry. In particular, we demonstrate that the decision to drop coverage by an insured grower may differ significantly from the corresponding decision to enroll in an insurance programme by an uninsured farmer. To the extent that policymakers want to encourage participation in subsidized crop insurance programmes, education and outreach efforts toward uninsured farmers may differ substantially from those directed toward keeping insured farmers enrolled in the programme. We investigate these differences.
The recent COVID-19 emergency has shaped economic performance across all sectors, and the fisheries and aquaculture sector did not come out unscathed. The need to protect against risks has always ...been primary for economic operators, but COVID-19 has accentuated the need to obtain coverage for health risks. In this regard, the European Union has moved quickly with an amendment art. 35 of European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (Regulation EU No. 508/2014), including "public health crises" among the causes considered valid for compensation in mutual funds. In this paper, we analyze the evolution of Regulation 508, focusing on Article 35 and its most recent amendments, to understand if the new reform is adherent to the needs of the fisheries sector in Italy, one of the only two States that have documented in their Operational Plans the intention to implement mutual funds. The work involved an empirical analysis through the use of multivariate statistics carried out on 61 Italian stakeholders. Several company profiles were identified and then the likelihood of subscribing to a mutual fund was estimated based on their focus on health crises. The work underlines that the amendments meet the demands of the sector for improved mutual fund clauses, but it’s not yet an attractive tool for the Italian market.
Aquaculture is now a viable alternative to help depleted wild fish stocks and encourage the production of alternative animal protein sources. However, studies have shown that farmed fish has a less ...positive image in consumers than wild fish. The present study investigates the aspects that most influence the consumption choices of some of the most farmed species in the Mediterranean, sea bass and sea bream. The objective is to analyse the habits and preferences of consumers of these products in Mediterranean countries to identify homogeneous and transversal behaviours in the four countries under analysis in order to recognise common marketing actions and levers. To achieve it, a direct survey was conducted on a representative sample of 6117 consumers from France, Spain, Greece and Italy. The cluster analysis carried out for the four countries revealed 11 well-defined consumer profiles. They showed that different socio-economic characteristics, purchasing habits and product attributes explain a significant part of consumption choices and offer key information for exploring food consumer attitudes. In addition, the role of labelling in consumer behaviour is important to understand which aspects consumers pay more attention to when making their choices, representing a discriminating factor in segmenting respondents' profiles. Understanding these preferences, and the importance of certain information, can be useful to intercept and respond to market demands and to improve consumer confidence in farmed fish products.
•Analysis conducted on 4 Mediterranean countries has identified both specific and cross-cutting consumption dynamics.•Understanding these preferences may be useful to improve consumer confidence in farmed fish products and their demand.•Aquaculture could be an alternative to support the increase in fish consumption and avoid the depletion of marine stocks.
The aim of this paper is to study farmers' participation in rural development policy (RDP) measures. We investigate to what extent regional RDP priorities are driven by regional characteristics and ...moreover, whether regional-level policy priorities help to explain farmers' participation in RDP measures. We estimate a multilevel binary choice model that includes both farm-level and regional-level explanatory variables. We conclude that regional governments select RDP priorities based on the specific features of their region. Regional policy priorities play an important role in explaining farmers' participation in agri-environmental schemes but not in measures aimed at improving farmer competitiveness. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
To identify the risk factors for the development of postoperative septic complications in patients with intestinal perforation after abdominal trauma, and to compare the efficacies of single-drug and ...dual-drug prophylactic antibiotic therapy, we studied 145 patients who presented with abdominal trauma and intestinal perforation at two hospitals between July 1979 and June 1982. Logistic-regression analysis showed that a higher risk of infection (P less than 0.05) was associated with increased age, injury to the left colon necessitating colostomy, a larger number of units of blood or blood products administered at surgery, and a larger number of injured organs. The presence of shock on arrival, which was found to increase the risk of infection when this factor was analyzed individually, did not add predictive power. Patients with postoperative sepsis were hospitalized significantly longer than were patients without infection (13.8 vs. 7.7 days, P less than 0.0001). Both treatment regimens--cefoxitin given alone and clindamycin and gentamicin given together--resulted in similar infection rates, drug toxicity, duration of hospitalization, and costs.
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