This paper analyzes the demand for rainfall-based weather hedges among farmers in rural India. We explore the predictions of a standard expected utility theory framework on the nature of demand for such products, in particular testing whether demand behaves as predicted with respect to price,...

Smallholder farmers are increasingly exposed to weather extremes but lack access to affordable insurance products to protect their livelihoods from catastrophic crop damage. This paper analyzes the feasibility of Picture-Based Insurance (PBI) as a tool to improve the quality and affordability of...

Agricultural insurance has attracted considerable interest in recent years. Innovations in agricultural index insurance have raised expectations that the private sector can overcome shortcomings associated with more traditional indemnity-based products like multi-peril crop insurance, and...

Smallholder farmers are increasingly exposed to weather extremes but lack access to affordable insurance products for catastrophic crop damage. This paper analyzes the feasibility of Picture-Based Insurance (PBI) as a low-cost tool to improve coverage. PBI verifies insurance claims using...

This paper develops a novel methodology to estimate the degree of spatial basis risk for an arbitrary rainfall index insurance instrument. It relies on a widely used stochastic rainfall generator, extended to accommodate nontraditional dependence patterns — in particular spatial upper-tail...

Production risk is pervasive in agriculture, yet smallholder farmers lack access to quality insurance. This is due to asymmetric information in markets for indemnity insurance, and high basis risk, limited trust, and poor understanding of index-based insurance. Digital technologies can help...