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.