Insuring against droughts: Evidence on agricultural intensification and index insurance demand from a randomized evaluation in rural Bangladesh
Insuring against droughts: Evidence on agricultural intensification and index insurance demand from a randomized evaluation in rural Bangladesh

Author: Hill, Ruth Vargas

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2017-04-07

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13:

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It is widely acknowledged that unmitigated risks provide a disincentive for otherwise optimal investments in modern farm inputs. Index insurance provides a means for managing risk without the burdens of asymmetric information and high transaction costs that plague traditional indemnity-based crop insurance programs. Yet many index insurance programs that have been piloted around the world have met with rather limited success, so the potential for insurance to foster more intensive agricultural production has yet to be realized. This study assesses both the demand for and the effectiveness of an innovative index insurance product designed to help smallholder farmers in Bangladesh manage risk to crop yields and the increased production costs associated with drought. Villages were randomized into either an insurance treatment or a comparison group, and discounts and rebates were randomly allocated across treatment villages to encourage insurance take-up and to allow for the estimation of the price elasticity of insurance demand. Among those offered insurance, we find insurance demand to be moderately price elastic, with discounts significantly more successful in stimulating demand than rebates. Farmers who are highly risk averse or sensitive to basis risk prefer a rebate to a discount, suggesting that the rebate may partially offset some of the implicit costs associated with insurance contract nonperformance. Having insurance yields both ex ante risk management effects and ex post income effects on agricultural input use. The risk management effects lead to increased expenditures on inputs during the aman rice-growing season, including expenditures for risky inputs such as fertilizers, as well as those for irrigation and pesticides. The income effects lead to increased seed expenditures during the boro rice-growing season, which may signal insured farmers’ higher rates of seed replacement, which broadens their access to technological improvements embodied in newer seeds as well as enhancing the genetic purity of cultivated seeds.

Is there a market for multi-peril crop insurance in developing countries moving beyond subsidies? Evidence from India
Is there a market for multi-peril crop insurance in developing countries moving beyond subsidies? Evidence from India

Author: Ghosh, Ranjan Kumar

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2019-03-29

Total Pages: 43

ISBN-13:

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Researchers and policymakers have long understood the benefits of crop insurance but have been consistently disappointed by the poor performance of these programs. Rarely have programs seen sizeable take-up rates without support through large government subsidies, and in many countries, demand has been meager even at prices well below fair-market rates. Experiences from India have largely followed this trend, despite a number of large policy initiatives. Limited demand stems from low perceived value, arguably because the existing insurance products are unsuited to farmers’ needs. The present study fills an important gap in rural development by improving upon existing insurance policy design by incorporating product characteristics better suited to farmers’ preferences. To do so, we conducted a discrete choice experiment with agricultural households in four states in India. While farmers seem to like several of the features of policies offered under existing programs, our results suggest they would generally be willing to pay more than the highly subsidized rate they currently pay and are also clearly dissatisfied with delayed and uncertain indemnity payments and would be willing to pay a significant premium for more assured and timely payment delivery.

The Economics of Crop Insurance and Disaster Aid
The Economics of Crop Insurance and Disaster Aid

Author: Barry K. Goodwin

Publisher: American Enterprise Institute

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 9780844739083

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This study is the first to provide a comprehensive and in-depth economic analysis of the origins and consequences of U.S. crop insurance and disaster relief programs. The authors investigate the policy options for disaster assistance and crop insurance, beginning with the recognition that current policies are unsatisfactory.

Barriers to micro-insurance outreach for pastoralists and crop farmers in rural areas in Kenya
Barriers to micro-insurance outreach for pastoralists and crop farmers in rural areas in Kenya

Author: Benard Kilel

Publisher: diplom.de

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 73

ISBN-13: 3842848188

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Micro insurance in Kenya is still undeveloped compared to micro credit and micro savings due to the fact that it offers no immediate benefits to the insured. Insurance companies in Kenya have been taking long to compensate their clients in the case of any peril and therefore insurance is seen as a way of stealing the money from the citizens. This study has looked into ways of making micro insurance locally available to both large and small scale crop farmers. It has gone a step further to investigate ways of merging up micro insurance and micro credit by using insurance as collateral to acquire loan. It was realized that there is a possibility of selling an insurance contract to a buyer of produce whereby the farmer can later pay the premium after the harvest of the produce. Moreover, there is a possibility of the harvest being used as collateral when it is in the warehouse of the Kenya National and Cereals Produce Board (NCPB). This increases the creditworthiness of the otherwise not qualifying-for-credit farmer as well as the produce being stored waiting to hit the market highs in order to be sold for profit. To make use of the technology, this paper calls for the development of a mobile application that will enable farmers access information in real time on their mobile phones and thereby being able act accordingly.

Farmers' Willingness to Purchase Weather Insurance in Rural China
Farmers' Willingness to Purchase Weather Insurance in Rural China

Author: Calum G. Turvey

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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China frequently suffers from weather related natural disasters and is a source of wide-spread systemic risk throughout large swaths of China. During these periods farmers crops are at risk and for a largely poor population few can afford the turmoil to livelihoods that goes along with drought. Throughout the developing world there is serious interest in index-based weather insurance for agriculture, and in China the China Insurance Regulatory Commission is investigating the insurability of weather related risk. Beyond that little formal research has appeared on either the demand, use or design of index insurance in China. This paper provides a preliminary assessment of farmers' willingness to pay for drought insurance. Based on a survey of over 890 farm households in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces the results show that while there is significant demand, price may be an issue. Our results show that the majority of farm households would transition from a no-demand state to a demand state as prices fall. This suggests that in order to gain wide gain adoption there may be a need for governmental intervention.