Does agricultural insurance promote primary industry production? Evidence from a quasi-experiment in China

Abstract

Whether agricultural insurance promotes primary industry production has been debated for decades. Our paper studies this question based on the agricultural insurance premium subsidy policy in China. We use this quasi-experiment to conduct difference-in-differences and event study estimations. We find that the development of agricultural insurance, induced by premium subsidies, significantly promotes primary industry production; per person, it increases by CNY 1430 in subsidised provinces compared to unsubsidised provinces. We use county-level data to address the aggregation problem in our province-level analysis and obtain the same conclusion. We also find that agricultural insurance primarily affects agriculture and husbandry among the four subindustries of the primary industry.