Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Hidden information and Hidden Action in Rural Crop Insurance Markets

经济学博士论文研究：农村农作物保险市场的隐性信息与隐性行为

• 批准号: 0962588
• 负责人: Christopher Udry
• 金额: $ 1.93万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-05-15 至 2012-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0962588&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Hidden

AbstractAgriculture is inherently risky, perpetually under threat from draughts, hurricanes, floods, pests and crop diseases. In response to farmers' need to manage risk, governments and policy makers throughout the world have for decades attempted to provide public crop insurance or promote its private provision. Almost all such attempts have failed to operate sustainably without government subsidies.Project: The researchers propose to study the reasons for this failure of crop insurance. They will, in partnership with the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation, a government entity, implement an experimental crop insurance program offered to rice farmers in rural Philippines. The design will allow them to separately identify the extent of adverse selection (i.e. when demand for insurance is higher among farmers who are more at risk) and moral hazard (i.e. lowered incentives of covered farmers to prevent damages), the main barriers to efficient workings of insurance markets.Intellectual merit: Using recent developments in experimental methodology, the researchers will be able to provide an empirical foundation for seminal theoretical papers on the economics of contracts by empirically decomposing these theoretical mechanisms. In addition, they will go beyond recent experimental contributions by incorporating measures of preferences, such as an individuals' aversion to risk, to further decompose the contract selection decision. This empirical evidence will contribute to the iterative process, from theory to testing and back to theory, that is so essential to the advancement of scientific knowledge.Broader impacts: The research has the promise to have broad implications for the design and implementation of public insurance programs. The findings will improve understanding of the workings of insurance markets and may lead to better regulation and more efficient insurance markets. Finally, it will help in the design of crop insurance programs in particular and thereby improve both risk management options for poor rural farmers and the governments' use of public funds for rural development.

农业是一个具有内在风险的行业，长期受到干旱、飓风、洪水、虫害和作物病害的威胁。为了应对农民管理风险的需求，世界各地的政府和政策制定者几十年来一直试图提供公共作物保险或促进其私人提供。几乎所有这些尝试都未能在没有政府补贴的情况下可持续地运作。项目：研究人员建议研究农作物保险失败的原因。他们将与政府实体菲律宾农作物保险公司合作，实施一项向菲律宾农村稻农提供的实验性农作物保险计划。设计将允许他们分别识别逆向选择的程度（即风险更大的农民对保险的需求更高）和道德风险（即受保农民防止损失的积极性降低），这是保险市场有效运作的主要障碍。利用实验方法学的最新发展，研究人员将能够通过实证分解，为有关合同经济学的开创性理论论文提供实证基础，这些理论机制。此外，他们将超越最近的实验贡献，纳入偏好的措施，如个人的厌恶风险，进一步分解合同选择的决定。这一经验证据将有助于从理论到测试再回到理论的迭代过程，这对科学知识的进步至关重要。更广泛的影响：这项研究有望对公共保险计划的设计和实施产生广泛的影响。研究结果将提高对保险市场运作的理解，并可能导致更好的监管和更有效的保险市场。最后，它将特别有助于农作物保险计划的设计，从而改善贫困农民的风险管理选择，并改善政府对农村发展公共资金的使用。