Centre for Public Policy to host talk on ‘Bundled agricultural insurance products – results from a discrete choice experiment in Bihar, India’ on 16 January
Speaker is water resource economist Archisman Mitra, International Water Management Institute, Delhi
8 January, 2025, Bengaluru: The Centre for Public Policy (CPP) at IIM Bangalore will host a seminar on, ‘Bundled agricultural insurance products – results from a discrete choice experiment in Bihar, India’, at 3 pm on 16 January 2025, at Classroom P-11 of IIMB. The talk will be led by Archisman Mitra who is a water resource economist with over 11 years of experience specializing in micro-econometric analysis and impact evaluation of development programs and policies, with a focus on the water sector in South Asia.
Archisman Mitra holds a Master’s degree in Economics from New York University. Since 2018, he has been a researcher in Water Resource Economics at International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Delhi. At IWMI, his research is at the intersection of energy and water in agriculture, an essential area for achieving water security and addressing climate change impact.
Abstract of talk: Bundling crop-insurance with stress-tolerant seeds is often proposed as a solution for increasing adoption of traditional crop insurance amongst farmers in low-income countries. The rationale behind such bundling is to reduce costs. Stress-tolerant seeds mitigate moderate flood risks which are more frequent, while the monetary insurance component protects against rarer, extreme flood risks, thus reducing the insurance premiums as compared to offering monetary insurance alone to cover both moderate and extreme flood risks. The researchers designed a discrete choice experiment for a bundled product that includes index flood insurance and flood tolerant rice seeds, coupled with vegetable seeds for sustaining livelihoods post-flood. The choice experiment was implemented with farmers in flood affected zones of Bihar, India. It was found that while farmers have a high preference for monetary insurance, preferences for stress-tolerant seeds are not high on average due to real and perceived yield penalties associated with stress-tolerant seeds. Consequently willingness-to-pay for such bundled products is low, indicating that adoption will not be high. Overall, the research results suggest that bundled insurance products may not be suitable for all types of farmers; and greater awareness and larger financial incentives, especially when incidence of adoption is low, may be required to increase adoption of bundled insurance products.
Centre for Public Policy to host talk on ‘Bundled agricultural insurance products – results from a discrete choice experiment in Bihar, India’ on 16 January
Speaker is water resource economist Archisman Mitra, International Water Management Institute, Delhi
8 January, 2025, Bengaluru: The Centre for Public Policy (CPP) at IIM Bangalore will host a seminar on, ‘Bundled agricultural insurance products – results from a discrete choice experiment in Bihar, India’, at 3 pm on 16 January 2025, at Classroom P-11 of IIMB. The talk will be led by Archisman Mitra who is a water resource economist with over 11 years of experience specializing in micro-econometric analysis and impact evaluation of development programs and policies, with a focus on the water sector in South Asia.
Archisman Mitra holds a Master’s degree in Economics from New York University. Since 2018, he has been a researcher in Water Resource Economics at International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Delhi. At IWMI, his research is at the intersection of energy and water in agriculture, an essential area for achieving water security and addressing climate change impact.
Abstract of talk: Bundling crop-insurance with stress-tolerant seeds is often proposed as a solution for increasing adoption of traditional crop insurance amongst farmers in low-income countries. The rationale behind such bundling is to reduce costs. Stress-tolerant seeds mitigate moderate flood risks which are more frequent, while the monetary insurance component protects against rarer, extreme flood risks, thus reducing the insurance premiums as compared to offering monetary insurance alone to cover both moderate and extreme flood risks. The researchers designed a discrete choice experiment for a bundled product that includes index flood insurance and flood tolerant rice seeds, coupled with vegetable seeds for sustaining livelihoods post-flood. The choice experiment was implemented with farmers in flood affected zones of Bihar, India. It was found that while farmers have a high preference for monetary insurance, preferences for stress-tolerant seeds are not high on average due to real and perceived yield penalties associated with stress-tolerant seeds. Consequently willingness-to-pay for such bundled products is low, indicating that adoption will not be high. Overall, the research results suggest that bundled insurance products may not be suitable for all types of farmers; and greater awareness and larger financial incentives, especially when incidence of adoption is low, may be required to increase adoption of bundled insurance products.