Meike Will

  • since 10/2020 Postdoc at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Department of Ecological Modelling, Project BESTMAP - Behavioural, Ecological and Socio-economic Tools for Modelling Agricultural Policy
  • since 03/2017 PhD Student at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Department of Ecological Modelling; PhD Topic: “Socio-environmental modelling for sustainable development: Exploring the interplay of formal insurance and risk-sharing networks” (SEEMI-Project as part of the Working Group POLISES)
  • 10/2014 - 02/2017 Master of Science in Physics, Leipzig University
  • 10/2011 - 12/2014 Bachelor of Science in Physics, Leipzig University

Research Interests

  • Exploring dynamics of socio-environmental systems
  • Assessing impacts of policy instruments
  • Representing human decision-making in agent-based models
  • Coupling agent-based models and social network analysis

RiskNetABM

Meike Will Jürgen Groeneveld Karin Frank Birgit Müller Friederike Lenel | Published Mon Jul 20 13:41:17 2020 | Last modified Mon May 3 16:26:34 2021

The fight against poverty is an urgent global challenge. Microinsurance is promoted as a valuable instrument for buffering income losses due to health or climate-related risks of low-income households in developing countries. However, apart from direct positive effects they can have unintended side effects when insured households lower their contribution to traditional arrangements where risk is shared through private monetary support.

RiskNetABM is an agent-based model that captures dynamics between income losses, insurance payments and informal risk-sharing. The model explicitly includes decisions about informal transfers. It can be used to assess the impact of insurance products and informal risk-sharing arrangements on the resilience of smallholders. Specifically, it allows to analyze whether and how economic needs (i.e. level of living costs) and characteristics of extreme events (i.e. frequency, intensity and type of shock) influence the ability of insurance and informal risk-sharing to buffer income shocks. Two types of behavior with regard to private monetary transfers are explicitly distinguished: (1) all households provide transfers whenever they can afford it and (2) insured households do not show solidarity with their uninsured peers.

The model is stylized and is not used to analyze a particular case study, but represents conditions from several regions with different risk contexts where informal risk-sharing networks between smallholder farmers are prevalent.

Under development.

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