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...

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...

This paper describes the index-based livestock insurance program in Mongolia designed in the context of a World Bank lending operation with Government of Mongolia and implemented on a pilot basis in 2005. This program involves a combination of self-insurance by herders, market-based insurance,...

Recent criticisms of the “green revolution” wheats concern the effects of their popularity on crop diversity and the consequences for productivity and conservation. We use a Just-Pope production function to test the relationship of genetic resource and diversity variables to mean and...

Financial intermediaries [FIs] in developing and emerging economies are poorly equipped to manage natural disasters. These events create losses for FIs, eroding capital reserves and compromising their ability to lend. Portfolio-level insurance against disasters can improve FI management of these...

Weather index insurance underwrites a weather risk, typically highly correlated with agricultural production losses, as a proxy for economic loss and is gaining popularity in lower income countries. This instrument, although subject to basis risk and high start-up costs, should reduce costs over...