Despite its promise to help low-wealth households manage climate risk, index insurance remains hampered by downside … basis risk, meaning that an insured party suffers a loss, but receives no payment because the insurance index fails to … focuses on the creation of statistically rigorous insurance zones that minimize downside basis risk. In contrast to our …

Home equity insurance policies, policies insuring homeowners against declines in the price of their homes, would bear … some resemblance both to ordinary insurance and to financial hedging vehicles. A menu of choices for the design of such … insurance company in effect serves as a retailer to homeowners of short positions in real estate futures markets or of put …

impact of insurance on cotton, but, consistent with microeconomic theory, we find significant spillover impacts on investment …This paper examines whether agricultural insurance can boost investment by small scale farmers in West Africa. We … conduct a randomized evaluation to analyze the impacts of index insurance for cotton farmers in Burkina Faso. We find no …

Natural catastrophes often have catastrophic risks on insurance companies as well as on the insured. Using a very large … dataset on homeowners' insurance coverage by state, by firm, and by year for the 1984 to 2004 period, this paper documents the … "blockbuster catastrophes." Insurers adapt to these catastrophic risks by raising insurance rates, leading to lower loss ratios …

State guaranty funds are quasi-governmental agencies that provide insurance to policyholders against the risk of … insurance company failure. But insurance provided by guaranty funds, like all insurance, creates moral hazard problems … insurance companies to borrow money (i.e., from policyholders). Moreover, the existence of guaranty fund insurance enables …

distributed through the insurance and reinsurance systems. However, because insurance companies tend to share relatively small … amounts of their cat exposures and because insurance companies' capital is threatened by large event, these risks are now …

demonstrate that both features deviate from what theory would predict, yet are characteristic of many transactions, not simply …

with natural hazards, such as hurricanes and earthquakes. Risk management theory suggests protection by insurers and other …, especially after cat events. We then examine clinical evidence to understand why the theory fails. Specifically, we examine … hints as to why the theory fails. We explore these hints in eight theoretical explanations and find the most compelling to …