In recent years, the academic and policy circles around the world are very interested in how weather index insurance, an innovative financial product much less costly than other agricultural insurance products, can be used to mitigate negative impacts of large rainfall shocks among rural households. So when considering an expansion of existing safety net programs, should weather index insurance become a new part? How can it be cost-effectively integrated? Or should the government just give more cash to the poor? Which of these two alternatives will bring larger positive effects on consumption, investments and agricultural production? Which will be more effective in alleviating poverty? To obtain unbiased causal estimates that can properly answer these questions, this project will use a randomized controlled trial (RCT) on a sample of 30 rural villages and 900 rural households in Ethiopia. We will randomly assign the sample into one of the three groups: 1) Pure PSNP: Poor households receiving benefits from the existing Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP); 2) PSNP+WII: Poor PSNP households receiving also Weather Index Insurance (WII) as in-kinds; and 3) PSNP+CCT: Poor PSNP households receiving additional conditional cash transfers (CCT). The RCT design and data collected will allow us to conduct econometric analysis to answer our questions. Overall, this study aims to provide scientific and policy recommendations on the use of agricultural weather insurance as an additional component in safety net program. These insights will be useful for future design on social protection programs and for economic and agricultural development.