USAID BASIS AMA CRSP/I4 Index Insurance Innovation Initiative 2014 Technical Committee Meeting

Thursday and Friday, November 6-7, 2014
12:00 to 5:15pm
George Washington University, Washington DC

This event was a gathering of researchers and stakeholders involved with the Index Insurance Innovation Initiative (I4) at UC Davis. Presentations at this event came in three primary types:

1. New Project Presentations
2. Project Updates
3. Research Paper Presentations.

These different presentations reflect the different stages these projects are at in implementation, and are meant to keep stakeholders apprised of current project status and recent developments, as appropriate.

Presentations:

• New Project Presentation: E-Warehousing for Smallholder Farmers
  Craig McIntosh, University of California San Diego
  Lorenzo Casaburi, Stanford University
• Project Update 1: Complementarities of Training, Technology, and Credit in Smallholder Agriculture: Impact, Sustainability, and Policy for Scaling-up in Senegal and Uganda
  Stephen Smith, George Washington University
• Project Update 2: Demand and Supply Constraints to Improved Sorghum Technology Adoption and their Gender-Differentiated Effects in Burkina Faso
  Andrew Dillon, Michigan State University
• Research Paper Presentation: Signals, Similarity and Seeds: Social Learning in the Presence of Imperfect Information and Heterogeneity
  Emilia Tjernstrom, University of California Davis
  Chris Udry, Yale University
• New Project Presentation: Agglomeration Payments and Conservation Agriculture in Malawi
  Gregory Parkhurst, Weber State University
  Stephen Smith, George Washington University
• Project Update 3: Household-Level Impacts of System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in Haiti: An SRI intervention with training, insured credit, and coordination by irrigation bloc
  Travis Lybbert, University of California Davis
• USAID Relations and Data Sharing
  Lena Heron, USAID
• Panel Presentation: BASIS Seed Awards Communication, Search, and Mobile Phones: A Telephone Directory Intervention in Tanzania
  Jenny Aker, Tufts University
• Rural Livelihoods and Institutional Reform in Small-Scale Fisheries in Tanzania 
  Yaniv Stopnitzky, University of San Francisco
• A Quasi-Experimental “Post-Mortem” Study of a Discontinued Insurance Product in Haiti
  Aaron Isaac Baum, Columbia University
• Project Update 4: Tailoring Contract Farming to Smallholders: Experimental Evidence on Enrollment Impact, Insurance Provision, and Communication Technologies
  Lorenzo Casaburi, Stanford University
• Project Update 5: Promoting Improved Production Technologies among Smallholders in Ghana via Interlinked Credit and Index Insurance Contracts
  Mario Miranda, Ohio State University
• Research Paper Presentation: A Multiple Interventions Approach to Increasing Technology Adoption: Evidence From Mexico
  Xavier Gine, World Bank
  Andrew Dillon, Michigan State University
• New Project Presentation: Evaluating the effect of site-specific soil information on farmer input choices and the relationship between poverty and soil quality
  Cheryl Palm, Columbia University
  Michael Carter, University of California, Davis
• New Project Presentation: Evaluation of the Welfare Impacts of a Livestock Transfer Program in Nepal
  Nick Magnan, University of Georgia
  Alain de Janvry, University of California Berkeley
• New Project Presentation: Combining technological and institutional innovations for risk management and risk coping by smallholder farmers in Bangladesh
  Alain de Janvry, University of California Berkeley
  Travis Lybbert, University of California Davis
• Project Update 6: Disseminating Innovative Resources and Technologies to Smallholders (DIRTS) in Northern Region, Ghana
  Chris Udry, Yale University
• Research Paper Presentation: Insights from Behavioral Economics on the Design of Agricultural Index Insurance
  Discontinuity of Preferences and Insurance Demand: Results From a Framed Field Experiment in Burkina Faso
  Ex-ante Impacts of Agricultural: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Mali
  Michael Carter, University of California, Davis
  Xavier Gine, World Bank