Spatial Relationship of Crop Yields

Systemic risk, in regard to agricultural production, refers to the spatial depen­dence of crop yields stemming from correlated weather, soil patterns, and other geographically related factors. Systemic risk has been named as a contributing factor to the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation's (FCIC) poor actuarial performance. To date, little research has explored the spatial depen­dence structure of crop yields. This book explores three aspects of the spatial dependence structure of yields; the cross-crop spatial correlation structure, the rate of crop yield spatial correlation decay, and, using the copula metho­dology, the characteristics of the bivariate distributions that define the spatial relationship of crop yields. This book is addressed to professionals research­ing in the area of crop insurance.