This book outlines the origins and evolution of index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) and discusses the economics of poverty, risk management, and drylands development, as well as the value and challenges of integrating research with operational implementation to tackle development and humanitarian challenges.

This paper results reports from a RCT in Mozambique and Tanzania that bundled stress-tolerant maize seeds with index insurance for a seed-replacement guarantee. The analysis shows that farmers who experienced shocks and saw both technologies in action subsequently increased their agricultural investments, allowing farmers to return to return to their pre-shock positions and even to move toward higher expected incomes.

This study from Ghana investigates the willingness to pay (WTP) for index-based drought insurance coupled with agricultural loans by product design and gender, using a contingent valuation method.

This MRR Discussion Paper summarizes the current state of evidence on microinsurance, contingent credit, stress-tolerant seeds and other risk-management instruments that create new ways for small-scale agricultural households to manage weather-related risks.

In Ghana, insured loans increased farmers' likelihood of receiving credit by between 15 and 21 percentage points. There was no impact on the likelihood that farmers apply for credit but there was an increase in the likelihood of loan approvals of between 17 and 25 percentage points.

This paper summarizes the current state of evidence on index insurance for disaster risk and development including its impacts in the field, remaining challenges and opportunities, research gaps, and the knowledge frontier today.

This study shows that formal insurance uptake has no significant effect on pastoralists' willingness to share risk through customary institutions. Overall, the results imply that index insurance did not crowd out informal risk-sharing mediated by social networks.