This paper results reports from a RCT in Mozambique and Tanzania that bundled stress-tolerant maize seeds with index insurance for a seed-replacement guarantee. The analysis shows that farmers who experienced shocks and saw both technologies in action subsequently increased their agricultural investments, allowing farmers to return to return to their pre-shock positions and even to move toward higher expected incomes.
The analysis from Tanzania and Mozambique shows that drought has significant consequences on two nutritional outcomes in particular: food security and dietary diversity.
This study from Ghana investigates the willingness to pay (WTP) for index-based drought insurance coupled with agricultural loans by product design and gender, using a contingent valuation method.
This MRR Discussion Paper summarizes the current state of evidence on microinsurance, contingent credit, stress-tolerant seeds and other risk-management instruments that create new ways for small-scale agricultural households to manage weather-related risks.
This paper reports results from Tanzania on targeted soil information. Only farmers who received the targeted recommendations and a subsidy to purchase the recommended amendments increased their fertilizer application and yields relative to the control group.
This study provides some of the first evidence on the effectiveness of a payments for ecosystem services (PES) program to encourage the adoption of soil conservation practices, specifically conservation agriculture (CA).
This paper presents evidence from a large-scale experiment designed to reduce search costs in randomly selected sub-counties in Uganda by introducing a mobile phone-based marketplace for agricultural commodities.
This paper presents results of a RCT evaluating the 2.5-3.5-year impacts of a livelihoods program in Nepal that targets women and employs self-help groups, livestock transfers, and trainings.
In Ghana, insured loans increased farmers' likelihood of receiving credit by between 15 and 21 percentage points. There was no impact on the likelihood that farmers apply for credit but there was an increase in the likelihood of loan approvals of between 17 and 25 percentage points.
This paper summarizes the current state of evidence on index insurance for disaster risk and development including its impacts in the field, remaining challenges and opportunities, research gaps, and the knowledge frontier today.