Alan P. Ker

TL;DR: In this article, nonparametric density estimation procedures were used to evaluate county-level crop yield distributions and their implications for rating area-yield crop insurance contracts were discussed, and the procedures developed are used to measure yield risk and calculate insurance premium rates for wheat and barley in the 1995-96 Group Risk Program.

TL;DR: Although the magnitude of rotation benefits varied with crops, weather patterns and tillage, yield stability significantly increased when corn and soybean were integrated into more diverse rotations and the benefits of crop diversity under different soil moisture and temperature scenarios.

TL;DR: In this article, a nonparametric kernel density estimator was used to estimate conditional yield densities and derive the insurance rates for the U.S. crop insurance program, which is one of the only government-subsidized, income stabilizing mechanisms available to agricultural producers.

TL;DR: This article proposed a semiparametric estimator that, because of its theoretical properties and its simulation results, enables one to empirically proceed with a higher degree of confidence, which is problematic because conclusions from economic analyses, which require estimated conditional yield densities, tend not to be invariant to the modeling assumption.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined water rights and regulatory issues in 12 western states from 1987 to 2005 and found that prices are higher for agriculture-to-urban trades versus within-agriculture trades, in part reflecting the differences in marginal values between the two uses.