This paper describes a novel index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) product piloted among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where insurance markets are effectively absent and uninsured risk exposure is a main cause of poverty. We describe the methodology used to design the contract and its...

In Kenya's arid and semi arid lands (ASALs), drought is the most pervasive hazard, natural or otherwise, encountered by households on a widespread level. This is especially true for northern Kenya, where more than 3 million pastoralist households are regularly hit by increasingly severe...

Climate related shocks are among the leading cause of production and efficiency losses in smallholder crop and livestock production in rural Africa. Consequently, the identification of tools to help manage the risks associated with climactic extremities is increasingly considered to be amongst...

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a new index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) product designed to compensate for area average predicted livestock mortality loss in northern Kenya, where previous work has established the presence of poverty traps. We simulate household-specific wealth...

The effective design and implementation of interventions that reduce vulnerability and poverty require a solid understanding of underlying poverty dynamics and associated behavioral responses. Stochastic and dynamic benefit streams can make it difficult for the poor to learn the value of such...

This study explores the potential of index insurance as a mechanism to finance community-based biodiversity conservation in areas where a strong correlation exists between natural disaster risk, keystone species populations, and the well-being of the local population. We illustrate this...

This paper explores the role social network capital might play in facilitating poor agents' escape from poverty traps. We model and simulate endogenous network formation among households heterogeneously endowed with both traditional and social network capital who make investment and technology...

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...

This paper illustrates how weather derivatives indexed to forecasts of famine can be designed and used by operational agencies and donors to facilitate timely and reliable financing for effective emergency response to climate-based, slow-onset disasters such as drought. We provide a general...