Rate setting procedures for United States crop yield and revenue insurance contracts employ methods that presume correlations to be state invariant. Whether this is true matters. If yield-yield correlations strengthen when crops are subject to widespread stress, then diversification...

The use of plausible stochastic price processes in price risk analysis has allowed advances not seen in crop yield risk analysis. This study develops a stochastic process for yield modeling and risk management. The Pólya urn process is an internally consistent dynamic representation of yield...

While controversy surrounds skewness attributes of typical yield distributions, a better understanding is important for agricultural policy assessment and for crop-insurance rate setting. Day (1965) conjectured that crop yield skewness declines with an increase in nitrogen use at low levels but...

Empirical studies point to negative crop yield skewness, but the literature provides few clear insights as to why. This paper formalizes three points on the matter. Statistical laws on aggregates do not imply a normal distribution. Whenever the weather-conditioned mean yield has diminishing...

A large empirical literature exists seeking to identify crop yield distributions. Consensus has not yet formed. This is in part because of data aggregation problems but also in part because no satisfactory motivation has been forwarded in favor of any distribution, including the normal. This...