Crop yield distribution modeling faces three key challenges: complex distributional structure, limited historical data at the county level, and the need to incorporate evolving climate conditions into distributional dynamics. We propose a Fixed-Effect Panel Neural Mixture (FEPNM) framework to address these challenges. FEPNM extends finite mixture models to a panel data setting, allowing information sharing across counties through fixed effects to mitigate short time-series limitations. We further generalize the mixture model into a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) type specification by introducing a neural-network gating mechanism that flexibly maps climate variables and conservation practices to time-varying regime probabilities. This structure enables direct modeling of the probability of yield loss as a nonlinear function of climate exposure and management adoption. Simulations demonstrate that FEPNM substantially improves the precision of structural parameter estimates and average partial effects, particularly in short-T settings. In an empirical application to U.S. county-level corn yields, FEPNM outperforms conventional mixture and single-distribution specifications in both in-sample and out-of-sample likelihood. Our results provide structural evidence on how climate exposure and conservation practices jointly shape corn yield distributions. Heating Degree Days (HDD) significantly increase the probability of yield loss, while adoption of cover crops and no-tillage practices significantly reduces downside yield risk. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating nonlinear climate effects and management practices into distributional modeling for agricultural risk management and crop insurance design
Author
Abstract
Suggested Citation
DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.397878
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aes026:397878. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aesukea.html .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.
Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aes026/397878.html