Rice Yield Distribution and Risk Assessment in South

In the last decades, rice yields in south asian countries grewtremendously in one hand and a noticeable yield fluctuationon the other. the objective of this study was to examine the riceyield distributions, estimate yield risks at country level, andcompare risks between five countries namely afghanistan,bangladesh, nepal, sri lanka, and pakistan. anderson darling(ad) test was applied to test the goodness-of-fit for four distributionsby using country level de-trended rice yields from 1961to 2010. results showed the normal distribution was fitted wellin afghanistan and sri lanka, whereas the weibull distributionin bangladesh, nepal, and pakistan. the average yield risks at85% of the expected yield were found 5.29, 4.27, 3.86, 1.55,and .15% in afghanistan, sri lanka, pakistan, nepal, andbangladesh, respectively. wilcoxon signed rank test results ofmean absolute percentage differences showed yield risk inbangladesh was significantly lower than the rest four countiesand that in afghanistan was significantly higher than nepal andbangladesh at 0.1 level. the outcome of this study could givepolicy implications for designing and implementing the risk reducingprograms in the countries with higher yield risk.