Design e studio di fattibilità di un indice assicurativo agricolo: il caso delle coltivazioni di riso nel nord del Laos

There is an expectation that the use of satellite data can vastly improve the definition of index insurance both in terms of reducing administrative costs and information asymmetries. The aim of this work is to examine whether the use of open source satellite data, namely Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Gross Primary Production (GPP), improves the design of an agricultural index insurance for rice in the northern region of Laos. Our findings suggest that the use of NDVI data can lead to a potentially valuable index insurance, but the cost of lowering the associated basis risk is too high to be addressed entirely by the households.