Our research shows that index insurance will hold more economic value when zones group farms that tend to experience similarly low levels of production at the same times.
An audit rule that is activated when farmers believe an index has failed can serve as a fail-safe mechanism to ensure the insurance contract provides the intended protection.
Shifting from an exogenous weather-based to an endogenous yield-based index introduces concerns of asymmetric information, which can lead to market failures that constrain supply from providers. Larger insurance zones inhibit index manipulation, but average yield is less informative about any individual plot. We quantify this tradeoff for maize in Ghana using a spatial yield model calibrated to match observed production.
MRR's Village Insurance Savings Accounts (VISA) model offers multiple benefits for increasing farmer uptake of insurance. The model's design builds inclusion, understanding, affordability among users, and lower costs for the provider.
This paper studies the effect of a low-cost intervention that reformulates a livestock insurance contract so that it directly addresses women's risk and is sold in units that are commensurate with women's expenditure responsibilities.
Gallenstein uses a modified dictator game to explore how different sources of unearned inequality influence distribution decisions. He presents evidence that distributional decisions are responsive to multiple sources of unearned inequality.
This paper explores the effect of inequality on risk sharing and insurance uptake, and proposes a theoretical model around how fairness preferences influence these behaviors.
Lab-in-the-field experiments in Ghana found that participants were less likely to share risk, and more likely to select insurance, when their wealth was unequal. The findings raise the prospect that addressing inequality could have spillover effects for poverty reduction and resilience.
