This paper considers the potential for securitizing index-based insurance products that transfer weather and natural disaster risks from lower income countries. The paper begins with a brief overview of why markets for natural disaster risks are important in lower income countries and a review...

This paper presents a theoretical model to investigate the potential environmental consequences of weather index based insurance, a tool for mitigating weather risk that is gaining momentum in developing countries. We model potential effects of index insurance for pastoralists on animal stocking...

Replaced with revised version of paper 11/18/08.

This article offers some perspective on the progress and challenges of managing catastrophic weather risk in lower income countries through the use of index insurance. Innovations in insurance for natural disaster risk are critically important to help the rural poor improve their lives and to...

This article considers the potential for securitizing index-based insurance products that transfer weather and natural disaster risks from lower income countries. It begins with a brief overview explaining why markets for natural disaster risks are important, yet often missing, in lower income...

Index insurance and probabilistic seasonal forecasts are becoming available in developing countries to help farmers manage climate risks in production. Although these tools are intimately related, work has not been done to formalize the connections between them. We investigate the relationship...

This article focuses on innovation in weather insurance designed to fit the special circum-stances of the poor in lower income countries where rural and agricultural financial markets are largely underdeveloped. Index insurance is an innovation that circumvents many of the fundamental problems...

We estimate the general-equilibrium labor market effects of a large-scale randomized intervention in which we designed and marketed a rainfall index insurance product across three states in India. Marketing agricultural insurance to both cultivators and to agricultural wage laborers allows us to...

Weather index insurance is considered a promising international climate policy instrument that can help households adapt better to climate change. This is especially true in developing countries where households often suffer severely from the consequences of extreme weather events. This report...