Experimental Design for Market Unraveling in Climate Insurance

I developed a multi-round online experiment investigating how climate risk contracts unravel in markets with asymmetric information. Working alongside a PhD researcher, I designed and implemented all logic and user flows in oTree, building a functional web platform with randomized matching, probabilistic contract sliders, and hidden information conditions.

In the experiment, sellers choose a rainfall threshold that determines a contract’s payout probability and visualized risk level. Buyers receive pre-priced contracts with fixed payouts but are blind to the underlying weather parameters, simulating real-world informational asymmetries. I architected the experimental logic to reflect seller-side incentives, aligning backend constraints with behavioral theory on adverse selection and price anchoring.

This project contributes to a dissertation exploring market unraveling in climate insurance using both lab experiments and fieldwork with Colombian farmers. My implementation enables scalable testing of behavioral responses to weather-indexed insurance under uncertainty.