We explore the uptake dynamics of a rainfall index insurance in Kenya in relation to a measure of perceived basis risk. We find notable levels of perceived negative basis risk, with around 7% of farmers receiving no pay-out following ‘drought-like’ conditions in the germination period. Next,...

The purpose of this paper is to examine weather risk management by application of weather derivatives in agriculture and evaluate the hedging efficiency. Agriculture is a sector highly sensitive to meteorological elements that affect the yield of many crops. The underlying weather indices...

This paper examines whether agricultural insurance can boost investment by small scale farmers in West Africa. We conduct a randomized evaluation to analyze the impacts of index insurance for cotton farmers in Burkina Faso. We find no impact of insurance on cotton, but, consistent with...

Basis risk––an imperfect correlation between an aggregate index and idiosyncratic damage––is a major impediment to index insurance take-up in developing countries. However, empirical evidence is scarce because of the difficulty in its direct measurement. This study uses household panel...

This article aims to evaluate the effect of insurance on production, technical efficiency, and input use of Italian specialised-quality grape growers. A panel instrumental variable stochastic frontier approach is applied over the years 2008-2017 using data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network....