The effective design and implementation of interventions that reduce vulnerability and poverty require a solid understanding of underlying poverty dynamics and associated behavioral responses. Stochastic and dynamic benefit streams can make it difficult for the poor to learn the value of such...

This article makes an initial attempt to design catastrophe (CAT) bond products for agriculture and examines the potential of these instruments as mechanisms for transferring agricultural risks from insurance companies to investors/speculators in the global capital market. The case of Georgia...

Reverse tenancy, wherein poorer landlords rent out land to richer tenants on shares, is a common phenomenon. Yet, it does not fit existing theoretical models of sharecropping and has never before been modeled in the development microeconomics literature. We explain reverse tenancy contracts...

In the paper, preliminary results of the analysis of potential use of climate forecast information in designing rainfall index insurance in the southeastern region of the U.S. are reported. Joint distributions of bi-monthly rainfall and El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) indexes are estimated...

This paper analyzes efficiency of weather derivatives as insurance instruments for rice in Ecuador. Weather derivatives were constructed for each county/season combination. Complicated weather models were estimated for the index, and a copula approach was used to get the probability...

This work is a first attempt to analyze the effect of weather derivative availability on the risk management strategies in a multi-period setting, when crop activities take place twice a year. Rice production in Ecuador is used as a case study. Numerical solutions show farmers improve their...

In this paper we estimate the effects of an imperfect insurance coverage on subjective well-being of a poor, rural population, by exploring whether insurance in force improves subjective well-being and whether insurance that lapsed but did not pay out leads to ex post buyer’s remorse....

In this article, possible use of climate forecasts in rainfall index insurance of hay and forage production is considered in a geographical area (southeast United States) relatively heavily impacted by the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Analysis of the stochastic properties of rainfall,...