ABSTRACT
This paper contrasts several simple Institutional structures that affect the risk environment faced by agricultural producers. Included is a base cash market case, futures and options market alternatives, and governmental price guarantee end crop insurance programs. In a situation in which both quantity and price are uncertain, each case produces a different pattern of revenues and costs. These differences lead to variations in the supply response to changes in the institutional structure, which in turn produces variations in the probabilities associated with alternate price/output combinations, The main point of this exercise is to point out that there is considerable variation in the incentive structure facing producers end that there is no substitute for the careful examination of these incentives in analyzing the impacts of alternate institutions, at both die individual and the market level.
