Do Experimental Games Increase Take-up Rates for Index Insurance? A Randomized Control Trial Approach

There has been much recent interest in the demand for index insurance, the influence of financial literacy on demand for financial products, as well as the positive benefits of experimental games. This paper describes a randomized control trial (RCT) that was performed to understand the effect of experimental games on take-­‐up rates for index insurance. Because estimation of the optimal level of take-­‐up is far beyond the scope of the current work, we simply present the impacts we observe on take-­‐up. We are not advocating increased take-­‐up in this paper or suggesting that take up rates are too low. These games were observed to increase take-­‐up of index insurance from 15.75% in the control group to 20.36% in the treatment group, increasing the number of purchasers by nearly one third.