Replication data for: Time versus State in Insurance: Experimental Evidence from Contract Farming in Kenya

The gains from insurance arise from the transfer of income across states. Yet, by requiring that the premium be paid upfront, standard insurance products also transfer income across time. We show that this intertemporal transfer can help explain low insurance demand, especially among the poor, and in a randomized control trial in Kenya we test a crop insurance product which removes it. The product is interlinked with a contract farming scheme: as with other inputs, the buyer of the crop offers the insurance and deducts the premium from farmer revenues at harvest time. The take-up rate for pay-at-harvest insurance is 72 percent, compared to 5 percent for the standard pay-up-front contract, and the difference is largest among poorer farmers. Additional experiments and outcomes provide evidence on the role of liquidity constraints, present bias, and counterparty risk, and find that enabling farmers to commit to pay the premium just one month later increases demand by 21 percentage points.

保险的收益源自跨自然状态的收入转移。然而，标准保险产品要求投保人预先缴纳保费，这一要求同时引发了跨期的收入转移行为。我们的研究表明，这种跨期转移可用于解释保险需求偏低的现象，尤其是在低收入群体中；我们在肯尼亚开展的随机对照试验中，对一款取消了该跨期转移机制的农作物保险产品进行了测试。该产品与订单农业方案绑定：与其他生产投入品一样，作物收购方同时提供保险服务，并在收获季从农户的销售收入中直接扣除保费。收获季缴纳保费的保险产品参保率达72%，而标准的预先缴费合约参保率仅为5%，且这一差距在低收入农户群体中最为显著。补充实验与相关结果验证了流动性约束、现时偏向型偏好以及交易对手风险在其中的作用，并发现仅将保费缴纳时间延后一个月，即可使农户的保险需求提升21个百分点。