Modeling Conditional Yield Densities |
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Authors: | Alan P Ker and Keith Coble |
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Institution: | Alan P. Ker is associate professor and head, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Arizona.;Keith Coble is associate professor, Department of Agricultural Economics, Mississippi State University. |
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Abstract: | 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 sufficiently abundant to invalidate many reasonable parametric models. This is problematic because conclusions from economic analyses, which require estimated conditional yield densities, tend not to be invariant to the modeling assumption. We propose a semiparametric estimator that, because of its theoretical properties and our simulation results, enables one to empirically proceed with a higher degree of confidence. |
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Keywords: | rating crop insurance contracts semiparametric estimators yield distributions |
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