Willingness-to-pay for microinsurance and flexibility: Evidence from an agricultural investment lab-in-the-field experiment in Senegal

Both researchers and practitioners increasingly recognize the importance of interacting savings, credit and insurance as risk coping tools for agricultural smallholders in developing countries. We (K. Czura, A. de Janvry, V. Dequiedt and E. Sadoulet) collaborated with the holistic risk reduction program R4 Senegal to study the impact of insurance on agricultural decision making and the willingness-to-pay for insurance in the presence of other financial instruments in original lab-in-the-field experiments. Preliminary analyses suggest (a) little over proportional effects of insurance on investment decisions and (b) some complementarity among different financial instruments, confirming the rising awareness among researchers and practitioners that a holistic approach to risk resilience is needed.