The impact of micro-credit interventions on existing credit markets is theoretically ambiguous. Previous empirical work suggests the entry of a joint-liability lender may lead to a positive impact on the informal lending rate.

Small-Scale Irrigation (SSI) interventions, like other development interventions, need to take into account men’s and women’s context-specific roles in agriculture and their related gender-based preferences and challenges.

Chapter 6 provides important insights into the promises and limits of production risk management through financial mechanisms.

This paper provides some of the first empirical evidence on farmers’ demand for two drought risk–management products: a recently released DT rice cultivar and a more comprehensive DT-WII risk–management bundle.

The Picture-Based Crop Insurance (PBI) project aims to develop a new way of delivering affordable and easy-to-understand crop insurance using farmers’ smartphone pictures to minimize the costs of loss verification.

Recognition of take-up and transaction cost challenges in individual microinsurance has led to a surge of interest in group microinsurance. Yet few studies have considered the effect of group insurance on the investment decisions of the insured.

It is widely acknowledged that unmitigated risks provide a disincentive for otherwise optimal investments in modern farm inputs.

A goal of agricultural policy in India has been to reduce farmers’ dependence on informal credit. To that end, recent initiatives have been focused explicitly on rural areas and have had a positive impact on the flow of agricultural credit.

Myanmar has one of the least developed financial systemsin the world and poor access to credit is widely believed tobe a major constraint to investment and productivityimprovements in agriculture.

This paper develops a novel methodology to estimate the degree of spatial basis risk for an arbitrary rainfall index insurance instrument.