Graduate Studies

 

First Advisor

Jay Parsons

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Committee Members

Bradley Lubben, Richard Perrin, Yifan Gong

Department

Agricultural Economics

Date of this Version

8-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Citation

A dissertation presented to the Graduate College of the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Major: Agricultural Economics

Under the supervision of Professor Jay Parsons

Lincoln, Nebraska, August 2025

Comments

Copyright 2025, Wajdi Belgacem. Used by permission

Abstract

This dissertation investigates two distinct but complementary dimensions of risk management in United States rangeland agriculture. Essay 1 measures spatial variation in basis risk within the Pasture, Rangeland, and Forage (PRF) rainfall-index program for 176 Nebraska grid cells (1988–2023). By linking official NOAA rainfall indices with 30-m Rangeland Analysis Platform biomass estimates, we find rainfall–forage correlations that peak at 0.45 but display pronounced heterogeneity. The probability that neither insured interval triggers during an actual forage loss averages 12%, rising to nearly 30% in several Sandhills cells, whereas optimally pairing late-spring and summer intervals reduces complete misses below 10%. These results underscore sharp grid-level disparities in PRF effectiveness and highlight the potential of interval tailoring to mitigate uncompensated drought losses. Essay 2 examines whether federally subsidized livestock insurance programs enhance production performance. Using a stochastic-frontier model with a control-function correction for the endogeneity of insurance, we analyze a county-level panel of 2,131 counties (2007–2022). An increase in the subsidy-to-liability ratio is associated with a reduction in mean technical inefficiency, with no statistically detectable effect on its dispersion. This finding indicates that, on average, larger subsidies strengthen managerial efficiency. Together, the essays show that PRF basis risk varies sharply across Nebraska grids and that higher federal livestock-insurance subsidies modestly increase average technical efficiency without changing its variance; careful rainfall-interval selection can improve the reliability of rangeland risk management.

Advisor: Jay Parsons

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