Development of Strategic Consultancy to Farm Managers: Experience from an Action Research Approach

A Danish action research approach to the development of strategic consultancy to farm managers is presented. The development principles adopted include separate investigations of the content and process of strategic consultancy resulting in the formulation of a development matrix and a procedure for knowledge transformations. The project activities were carried out by a self-organised team group with participants from both consultancy and research organisations. The produced knowledge and strategic tools have been tested in a number of farm cases by local consultants and the implemented evaluation programme indicates that the needs of farmers have been fulfilled and the local consultants have increased their strategic competences. Key words: Action research, strategic consultancy, process and content, development matrix, self-organisation, knowledge transformations, complex learning and consultancy processes.Farm Management,

An Empirical Investigation of Continuous-Time Equity Return Models

This paper extends the class of stochastic volatility diffusions for asset returns to encompass Poisson jumps of time-varying intensity. We find that any reasonably descriptive continuous-time model for equity-index returns must allow for discrete jumps as well as stochastic volatility with a pronounced negative relationship between return and volatility innovations. We also find that the dominant empirical characteristics of the return process appear to be priced by the option market. Our analysis indicates a general correspondence between the evidence extracted from daily equity-index returns and the stylized features of the corresponding options market prices.

Agricultural Risk Management - Experiences from an Action Research Approach

A new model for risk management in agriculture is described in the paper. The risk model is constructed as a context dependent process, which includes four main phases. The model is aimed at agricultural advisors, who wish to facilitate and disseminate risk management to farmers. It is developed and tested by an action research approach in an attempt to make risk management more applicable on family farms. Our obtained experiences indicate that farmers don't apply probabilistic thinking and other concepts according to formal decision theory.Risk management, consulting, action research, farm families, Risk and Uncertainty,