Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption : Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi
Does production risk suppress the demand for credit? We implemented a randomized field experiment to ask whether provision of insurance against a major source of production risk induces farmers to take out loans to adopt a new crop technology. The study sample was composed of roughly 800 maize and g...
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | EN |
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2012
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5782 |
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okr-10986-57822021-04-23T14:02:23Z Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption : Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi Gine, Xavier Yang, Dean Insurance Insurance Companies G220 Economic Development: Agriculture Natural Resources Energy Environment Other Primary Products O130 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences Diffusion Processes O330 Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets Q120 Agricultural Finance Q140 Agricultural Policy Food Policy Q180 Microdata Set Does production risk suppress the demand for credit? We implemented a randomized field experiment to ask whether provision of insurance against a major source of production risk induces farmers to take out loans to adopt a new crop technology. The study sample was composed of roughly 800 maize and groundnut farmers in Malawi, where by far the dominant source of production risk is the level of rainfall. We randomly selected half of the farmers to be offered credit to purchase high-yielding hybrid maize and groundnut seeds for planting in the November 2006 crop season. The other half of farmers were offered a similar credit package, but were also required to purchase (at actuarially fair rates) a weather insurance policy that partially or fully forgave the loan in the event of poor rainfall. Surprisingly, take-up was lower by 13 percentage points among farmers offered insurance with the loan. Take-up was 33.0% for farmers who were offered the uninsured loan. There is suggestive evidence that reduced take-up of the insured loan was due to farmers already having implicit insurance from the limited liability clause in the loan contract: insured loan take-up was positively correlated with farmer education, income, and wealth, which may proxy for the individual's default costs. By contrast, take-up of the uninsured loan was uncorrelated with these farmer characteristics. 2012-03-30T07:34:31Z 2012-03-30T07:34:31Z 2009 Journal Article Journal of Development Economics 03043878 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5782 EN CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article Malawi |
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Digital Repository |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
Digital Repositories |
| building |
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository |
| collection |
World Bank |
| language |
EN |
| topic |
Insurance Insurance Companies G220 Economic Development: Agriculture Natural Resources Energy Environment Other Primary Products O130 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences Diffusion Processes O330 Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets Q120 Agricultural Finance Q140 Agricultural Policy Food Policy Q180 Microdata Set |
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Insurance Insurance Companies G220 Economic Development: Agriculture Natural Resources Energy Environment Other Primary Products O130 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences Diffusion Processes O330 Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets Q120 Agricultural Finance Q140 Agricultural Policy Food Policy Q180 Microdata Set Gine, Xavier Yang, Dean Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption : Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi |
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Malawi |
| description |
Does production risk suppress the demand for credit? We implemented a randomized field experiment to ask whether provision of insurance against a major source of production risk induces farmers to take out loans to adopt a new crop technology. The study sample was composed of roughly 800 maize and groundnut farmers in Malawi, where by far the dominant source of production risk is the level of rainfall. We randomly selected half of the farmers to be offered credit to purchase high-yielding hybrid maize and groundnut seeds for planting in the November 2006 crop season. The other half of farmers were offered a similar credit package, but were also required to purchase (at actuarially fair rates) a weather insurance policy that partially or fully forgave the loan in the event of poor rainfall. Surprisingly, take-up was lower by 13 percentage points among farmers offered insurance with the loan. Take-up was 33.0% for farmers who were offered the uninsured loan. There is suggestive evidence that reduced take-up of the insured loan was due to farmers already having implicit insurance from the limited liability clause in the loan contract: insured loan take-up was positively correlated with farmer education, income, and wealth, which may proxy for the individual's default costs. By contrast, take-up of the uninsured loan was uncorrelated with these farmer characteristics. |
| format |
Journal Article |
| author |
Gine, Xavier Yang, Dean |
| author_facet |
Gine, Xavier Yang, Dean |
| author_sort |
Gine, Xavier |
| title |
Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption : Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi |
| title_short |
Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption : Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi |
| title_full |
Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption : Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi |
| title_fullStr |
Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption : Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption : Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi |
| title_sort |
insurance, credit, and technology adoption : field experimental evidence from malawi |
| publishDate |
2012 |
| url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5782 |
| _version_ |
1764396275478822912 |