Given the increasing interest in agricultural risk, many have sought improved methods to characterize conditional crop-yield densities. While most have postulated the Beta as a flexible alternative to the Normal, others have chosen nonparametric methods. Unfortunately, yield data tends not to be...

We use nonparametric density estimation procedures to evaluate county-level crop yield distributions. Implications for rating area-yield crop insurance contracts are discussed. The procedures developed are used to measure yield risk and calculate insurance premium rates for wheat and barley in...

With the crop insurance program becoming the cornerstone of U.S. agricultural policy, recovering accurate rates is of paramount interest. Lack of yield data presents, by far, the most fundamental obstacle to recovery of accurate rates. This article employs new methodology to estimate conditional...

Given the increasing interest in agricultural risk, many have sought improved methods to characterize conditional crop-yield densities. While most have postulated the Beta as a flexible alternative to the Normal, others have chosen nonparametric methods. Unfortunately, yield data tends not to be...

This article focuses on the effect of differing heteroscedasticity assumptions on derived premium rates of area-yield crop insurance. Tests of the proportional and absolute heteroscedasticity assumptions are conducted using both in-sample and out-of-sample measures. Our results suggest that...