I develop and estimate a dynamic stochastic optimization model to assess the impact of weather insurance on the consumption, investment, and welfare of farmers in developing countries. Weather insurance has the potential to provide large welfare gains, equivalent to a permanent increase in...

It is widely acknowledged that unmitigated risks provide a disincentive for otherwise optimal investments in modern farm inputs. Index insurance provides a means for managing risk without the burdens of asymmetric information and high transaction costs that plague traditional indemnity-based...

Farmers in rural Bangladesh face multiple sources of uninsured risk to agricultural production and household assets. In this paper, we present results from an experimental demand-elicitation exercise in rural Bangladesh to shed light on smallholder farmers’ interest in formal insurance...