Replaced with revised version of paper 11/28/06. Former title: The Expanded and Re-Parameterized Johnson System: A Most Crop-Yield Distribution Model

This paper proposes and explores the use of a partially adaptive estimation technique to improve the reliability of the inferences made from multiple regression models when the dependent variable is not normally distributed. The relevance of this technique for agricultural economics research is...

Recently developed techniques are combined for modeling mutually correlated crop yields and prices that exhibit heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation, respectively, and follow non-normal probability density functions (pdf's). The importance rigorously modeling these pdf's for financial risk...

Simulation methods are used to measure the expected differentials between the Mean Square Errors of the forecasts from models based on temporally disaggregated versus aggregated data. This allows for novel comparisons including long-order ARMA models, such as those expected with weekly data,...

Obtaining reliable estimates of insurance premiums is a critical step in risk sharing and risk transfer necessary to ensure solvency and continuity in crop insurance programs. Challenges encountered in the estimation include dealing with aggregation bias from using county level yield averages as...

Immigration reform is the most polarizing legislative issues in the US. Surprisingly, despite regular polling evidence of the American public's attitudes towards immigration reform proposals, little evidence has elicited the preferences of the group most affected by any policy changes - legal...

We apply the Distributional Event Response Model (DERM), which is appropriate in studying relatively slowly-evolving information events, to nineteen years of daily crude oil futures returns and volatility to analyze the pattern of market responses to selected events. The results show that all...

Previous research established that the expanded Johnson system can accommodate any theoretically possible mean-variance-skewness-kurtosis combination. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that this system can provide for a reasonably accurate modeling approximation of any probability distribution...