TY - GEN A1 - Baumgärtner, Stefan A1 - Quaas, Martin F. T1 - Agro-biodiversity as natural insurance and the development of financial insurance markets N2 - Agro-biodiversity can provide natural insurance to risk averse farmers. We employ a conceptual ecological-economic model to analyze the choice of agrobiodiversity by risk averse farmers who have access to financial insurance. We study the implications for individually and socially optimal agro-ecosystem management and policy design when on-farm agro-biodiversity, through ecosystem processes at higher hierarchical levels, generates a positive externality on other farmers. We show that for the individual farmer natural insurance from agro-biodiversty and financial insurance are substitutes. While an improved access to financial insurance leads to lower agro-biodiversity, the e_ects on the market failure problem (due to the external benefits of on-farm agro-biodiversity) and on welfare are determined by properties of the agro-ecosystem and agro-biodiversity’s external benefits. We derive a specific condition on agro-ecosystem functioning under which, if financial insurance becomes more accessible, welfare in the absence of regulation increases or decreases. KW - Biodiversität KW - Ökosystem KW - Agrarökosystem KW - Agrarplanung KW - Versicherung KW - agro-biodiversity KW - ecosystem services KW - agro-ecosystem management KW - insurance KW - risk-aversion Y1 - 2007 UR - http://pub-data.leuphana.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/522 ER -