This article focuses on innovation in weather insurance designed to fit the special circum-stances of the poor in lower income countries where rural and agricultural financial markets are largely underdeveloped. Index insurance is an innovation that circumvents many of the fundamental problems...

Herders in Mongolia have suffered tremendous losses in recent dzud (winter disasters), with livestock mortality rates of over 50 percent in some locales. This study examines the feasibility of offering insurance to compensate for animal deaths. Such an undertaking is challenging in any country....

The objective of this paper is to frame the key issues and summarize the current state of knowledge about and innovations in index-based risk transfer products (IBRTPs) as they relate to the management of climate risk for poverty reduction, especially of chronic or persistent poverty. In the...

A growing literature suggests that in low-income countries, households with few assets can be trapped in chronic poverty. This article reviews relevant threads of the poverty traps literature to motivate a description of the opportunities presented by innovative index-based risk transfer...

Almost 90 percent of Moroccan agriculture is not irrigated, and since most of Morocco's crops depend on adequate rainfall, yields and production vary widely. A drought insurance program based on rainfall index contracts is feasible in parts of Morocco and could significantly benefit its...

This paper describes the index-based livestock insurance program in Mongolia designed in the context of a World Bank lending operation with Government of Mongolia and implemented on a pilot basis in 2005. This program involves a combination of self-insurance by herders, market-based insurance,...