Concept and Unintended Consequences of Weather Index Insurance: The Case of Mexico
Concept and Unintended Consequences of Weather Index Insurance: The Case of Mexico
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DOI：
10.1093/ajae/aaq137
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发表时间：
2011
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. Fuchs;Hendrik Wolff
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Fuchs;Hendrik Wolff
最近，天气指数保险 (WII) 作为一种为农民（特别是发展中国家）提供保险以抵御天气相关风险的工具而受到广泛关注。捐助组织、地方政府、保险公司、发展经济学家以及农业经济学家正在讨论 WII 的成本和收益。虽然有关 WII 的文献主要集中在非洲和亚洲的许多案例，但在本文中，我们分析了墨西哥的 WII 计划，该计划是全球最大的 WII 计划之一。在这种背景下，我们讨论了对相关市场潜在的重要溢出效应，迄今为止学术文献中尚未考虑到这一点。首先，我们认为 WII 抑制了投资其他非保险作物，导致潜在的过度专业化和单一种植。其次，WII 抑制了对灌溉系统的投资，因为农民只有在非灌溉土地上进行生产时才能获得保险。第三，如果发生灾难性事件，食品价格可能会因赔偿金而上涨，而牺牲未参保的穷人的利益。我们还建议在墨西哥（不断地）重新校准天气指数的阈值，以适应抗旱种子的发育。最后，该指数可以相对容易地扩展以解释降水差异。我们认为，在 WII 的成本效益分析中应考虑这些因素和溢出效应。（此摘要借自本项目的另一个版本。）
Recently, Weather Index Insurance (WII) has received considerable attention as a tool to insure farmers against weather related risks, particularly in developing countries. Donor organizations, local governments, insurance companies, development economists as well as agricultural economists are discussing the costs and benefits of WII. While the literature on WII has mainly focused on many cases in Africa and Asia, in this article we analyze the WII program in Mexico, which is one of the largest WII programs worldwide. In this context we discuss potentially important spill-over effects on related markets which so far have not been considered in the academic literature. First, we argue that WII creates disincentives to invest in other non-insured crops leading to potential overspecialization and monoculture. Secondly, WII generates disincentives to invest in irrigation systems because farmers are insured only as long as production takes place on non-irrigated land. Third, in case of catastrophic events food prices can potentially inflate with indemnity payments at the expense of the uninsured poor. We also suggest that in Mexico the thresholds of the weather index be (continuously) re-calibrated in order to adjust for the development of drought resistant seeds. Finally, the index could relatively easily be extended to account for precipitation variances. We argue that these factors and spillover effects should be accounted for in cost benefit analysis of WII.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)