When the indemnity schedule is contingent on the farmer's price and individual yield, an optimal crop revenue insurance contract depends only on the farmer's gross revenue. However, this design is not efficient if, as is the case with available contracts, the coverage function is based on...

The optimal crop revenue insurance contract is designed from recent developments in the theory of insurance economics under incomplete markets. The message is two-fold. Firstly, when the indemnity schedule is contingent on individual price and individual yield, the optimal contract depends only...

This paper analyses the optimal hedging decisions for risk-averse producers facing crop risk, assuming crop yield insurance futures and options can be used. The first-best optimal hedge requires a futures position or an option position proportionate to the individual beta depending on whether...

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,...

India's crop insurance program is the world's largest with 25 million farmers insured. However, issues in design, particularly related to delays in claims settlement, have led to 95 million farmer households not being covered, despite significant government subsidy. To address this and other...

Designing and rating insurance products requires both science and judgment. In developing and emerging economies, actuarial procedures must be robust and implementable, as well as offering a sufficient degree of transparency and flexibility so as to allow expert judgment to be incorporated. This...

The weather index insurance market in India is the world's largest, having transitioned from small-scale and scattered pilots to a large-scale weather based crop insurance program covering more than 9 million farmers. This paper provides a critical overview of this market, including a review of...