Crop Yield Skewness Under Law of the Minimum Technology

David Hennessy

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2009, vol. 91, issue 1, 197-208

Abstract: No satisfactory motivation has been forwarded in favor of any crop yield distribution, including the normal. This article explores the foundations of yield distributions for the Law of the Minimum resource constraint technology at the plot level of analysis. With independent, identical, uniform resource availability distributions the yield skew is positive, whereas it is negative whenever the distributions are normal. Simulations show how asymmetries in resource availabilities determine skewness. It is suggested that a negative yield skew occurs whenever production is tightly controlled so that the left tails of some resources availabilities distributions are thin. Irrigation may increase yield skewness. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2009
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Related works:
Working Paper: Crop Yield Skewness Under Law of Minimum Technology (2012)
Working Paper: Crop Yield Skewness under the Law of Minimum Technology (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:91:y:2009:i:1:p:197-208

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