Assessing the financial risks of diversified coffee production systems: Analternative nonnormal CDF estimation approach

Recently developed techniques are adapted and combined for the modeling and simulation of crop yields and prices that can be mutually correlated, exhi bit heteroskedasticity or autocorrelation, and follow nonnormal probability density functions. The techniques are applied to the modeling and simulati on of probability distribution functions for the returns of three tropical agroforestry systems for coffee production. The importance of using distrib ution functions that can more closely reflect the statistical behavior of y ields and prices for risk analysis is discussed and illustrated.