We report results from a large, randomized field to study how access to formal microinsurance affects production and economic development. We induce exogenous variation in insurance coverage at the village level by randomly assigning performance incentives to the village animal husbandry worker who is responsible for signing farmers up for the insurance. We find that promoting greater adoption of insurance significantly increases farmers' sow production, and this effect seems to persist in the longer run; moreover, the increase in sow production in response to the sow insurance does not seem to be the result of the substitution of other livestock.

The entry of High-Speed Railways (HSR) represents disruptive competition to airlines. Utilizing a unique dataset of all flights departing from Beijing to 113 domestic destinations in China since January 2009, we employ a difference-in-differences approach to examine the effects of HSR entry on on-time performance and to identify the channels. We document two main findings. First, the entry of HSR leads to significant reductions in the mean and variance of travel delays on the affected airline routes. Second, the reductions in departure delays and taxi-in times at the destination airports are identified as the main channels.