Farmers in developing countries face relatively large income risk and have limited access to formal financial products that can help them manage their risk. We present results from a randomized controlled trial in rural China designed to understand whether a small change in the timing of a...

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,...

We analyze the effectiveness of a new approach in providing weather index–based insurance products to low-income populations. The approach is based on the concept of providing multiple weather securities that pay a fixed amount if the event written on the security (that monthly rainfall at a...

The African Risk Capacity (ARC), has been proposed as a pan-Africa drought risk pool to insure against drought risk in Africa south of the Sahara. If fully operationalized, the ARC will mark a major change in how donors fund emergency support to countries in Africa during times of need. In this...

Risk and poverty are inextricably linked. Susceptibility to risk is a defining feature of what it means to be poor. Poor people often live in environments characterized by high weather and disease risk, and it is poor households that have the fewest tools to deal with drought, floods, and...

This paper assesses the targeting performance of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP) – a large scale social safety net program that reaches more than one million rural Ethiopian households. Most beneficiary households do public works while a small proportion receive...