Ex post Moral Hazard in Crop Insurance: Costly State Verification or Falsification?

This article examines the extent to which actual crop insurance indemnification behaviour conforms to the theoretical predictions of two ex post moral hazard models ? costly state verification and costly state falsification ? and then explores whether the closely conforming model can indeed help deter ex post moral hazard in the United States (US) crop insurance program. The results suggest that indemnification behaviour in crop insurance is more in line with the costly state verification model. Following the theoretical predictions of the costly state verification model, however, may not be the optimal policy to deter ex post moral hazard since it is possible for insured producers to deceive loss adjusters and for loss magnitudes to not be truthfully verified.