This paper defines the first measure of economic resilience based on the cumulative current and future losses a shock-exposed household experiences relative to a counterfactual measure of what household economic well-being would have been absent the shock.

This book outlines the origins and evolution of index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) and discusses the economics of poverty, risk management, and drylands development, as well as the value and challenges of integrating research with operational implementation to tackle development and humanitarian challenges.

This paper studies the effect of a low-cost intervention that reformulates a livestock insurance contract so that it directly addresses women's risk and is sold in units that are commensurate with women's expenditure responsibilities.

Using a multi-year randomised controlled trial in Tanzania and Mozambique, this paper explores whether a complementary bundle of genetic and financial technologies can boost the resilience and productivity of small-scale farmers. The analysis shows that treatment-group farmers who experienced shocks and saw the technologies in action subsequently increased their agricultural investment beyond pre-shock levels.

This study examined the introduction of adaptively-bred maize varieties in an agro-ecological niche area in Western Kenya. The three-year randomized control trial revealed that the new seeds increased yields and revenues. The evidence suggests new ways for thinking about seed systems in agro-ecological niche areas.

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.

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 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.

A temporary subsidy for maize farmers in Mozambique stimulated Green Revolution technology adoption and led to increased maize yields. Social networks of subsidized farmers benefit from spillovers, experiencing increases in technology adoption, yields and beliefs about the returns to the technologies.

This paper's model of consumption and asset accumulation shows that a hybrid social protection policy, which devotes resources to funding “state of the world contingent transfers” (SWCTs) to vulnerable, but non-poor households in the wake of negative shocks, can result in lower rates of poverty in the medium term than does a conventional cash transfer policy.