Did the Federal Crop Insurance Reform Act Alter Farm Enterprise Diversification?
利用农场层面面板数据，估计1994年联邦农作物保险改革法案带来的保险补贴增加如何影响美国农场的企业多样化，发现补贴导致专业化小幅提升和生产效率提高，但效率增益远低于补贴额。
Abstract We estimate how much United States farms changed enterprise diversification in response to a marked increase in crop insurance coverage brought about by the 1994 Federal Crop Insurance Reform Act, which substantially increased insurance subsidies. The analysis exploits farm‐level panel census data to compare farm‐specific changes in enterprise diversification over time. By examining diversification decisions of the same farms over time, we control for time‐invariant unobserved individual heterogeneity. We then use pooled cross‐sectional data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Resource Management Survey to estimate the relationship between farm diversification and average returns. We find that the insurance subsidies caused a modest increase in enterprise specialisation and production efficiency. Estimated efficiency gains are far less than the subsidies.