Policy-Based Insurance for Three Major Staple Crops and Agricultural Economic Resilience: Evidence from a Multi-Timepoint Difference-in-Differences Analysis in China

Enhancing agricultural economic resilience (AER) is essential for global food security. As a key policy tool for stabilizing agricultural production, policy-based agricultural insurance lacks rigorous causal evidence on its impact on resilience. Using 2012–2023 provincial panel data from China, this study measures AER via the entropy method and identifies policy effects using a multi-timepoint difference-in-differences (DID) model. We find that policy-based insurance for the three major staple crops significantly strengthens AER, primarily by promoting agricultural technological innovation (ATI) and regional industrial structure upgrading (RIS). The improvement effects are more pronounced in central and western regions, non-major grain-producing areas, and regions with higher natural risks. Our findings confirm that the staple crop insurance policy effectively boosts agricultural resilience, suggesting that differentiated implementation can support more sustainable and targeted agricultural risk governance.