At University, one of my favorite econometric papers I studied was Karlan and Udry’s “Agricultural Decisions After Relaxing Credit and Risk Constraints.” This paper suggested Ghanaian farmers were highly risk- and minimally credit-constrained. Meaning, when they had access to insurance, decisions and outcomes changed significantly. This was not the case when they received cash grants. I would highly recommend reading this paper. Their result made me think about the role of risk and credit markets in agriculture. 

In so far as we can derive a lesson here, I think it is that insurance products can simultaneously protect farmers (climate resilience), increase incomes, and improve farming practices. Climate risk is massively under-insured. Companies playing in this exact space are very interesting, like Pula. 

When we are resource-constrained, and there are many missing markets in a system, which ones do we go after? 

I loved this paper because the result surprised me. A lot of decarbonizing the economy is a question of incentives - where do incentives currently lie? Can we change them, and if so, how? Perhaps the answers here are equally non-obvious. 

PS - I have a lot to say about econometrics, RCTs (like this one), and quasi-experiments. I have a list of questions on my phone I hope to try to tackle with a quasi-experiment one day. For next time!