IFPRI Discussion Paper

This study explores consumer acceptance and valuation of a genetically modified (GM) staple food crop in a developing country prior to its commercialization. We focus on the hypothetical introduction of a disease-resistant GM banana variety in ...

A multiregion applied general equilibrium model is used to examine the financial interactions among spheres of government in the context of fiscal consolidation. The framework combines nine regional submodels interacting through the trading of ...

In this paper we develop a dynamic regional computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for Guatemala that incorporates regional disaggregated sectors for agriculture. The model is designed to be useful as a development tool for determining the ...

This paper reviews existing microeconomic empirical literature on gender differences in use, access, and adoption of nonland agricultural inputs in developing countries. This review focuses on four key areas: (1) technological resources, (2) ...

This paper examines differences in the spatial and temporal variations of rice yields in China and Brazil. Our analysis indicates that, in China, rice yields have converged over time and rice production has become increasingly homogeneous. In ...

This paper considers vulnerability reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from a more aggregated macro viewpoint. We focus on risk related to agriculture, since vulnerability and agriculture are intimately linked in SSA due to the location of the ...

Ghana is an emerging success story in Africa and in a couple of years will become the first African country to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal of halving its national poverty rate. The government of Ghana has therefore extended its ...

In recent years access to safe and reliable water supplies has received increased government attention in Ethiopia. As a result, the national coverage rate for this service has gradually improved. Yet millions of people in rural areas still do ...

This paper assesses long-term impacts of vegetable and polyculture fish production technologies on a variety of measures of household and individual well-being in Bangladesh. In 1996–1997, households were surveyed in three sites where ...

Uganda has experienced rapid economic growth and poverty reduction over the past decade but has failed to significantly improve incomes in its northern regions where prolonged conflict has hindered growth. We consider three strategies to close ...

Contrary to conventional economic theories, the relationship between income growth and the share of the population within the rural or agricultural sector is extremely diverse, even among regions starting from similar levels of development, such ...

Malawi has experienced modest economic growth over the last decade and a half. However, agricultural growth has been particularly erratic, and while the incidence of poverty has declined, it still remains high. The Malawian government, within the ...

An economywide, multimarket (EMM) model was developed for Rwanda to analyze the linkages and trade-offs between growth and poverty reduction goals at both macro- and micro-economic levels. The model includes 30 agricultural commodities or ...

Zambia has experienced strong economic performance since 1999. However, agriculture has not performed as well as the rest of the economy, and although the incidence of poverty has declined, it still remains high. The Zambian government, within ...

Rapid economic growth has failed to significantly improve poverty and nutrition outcomes in Tanzania. This raises concerns over a decoupling of growth, poverty, and nutrition. We link recent production trends to household incomes using a ...

We analyze the evolution of Sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA’s) agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) over the past 45 years, looking for evidence of recent changes in growth patterns using an improved nonparametric Malmquist index. Our TFP ...

Participatory approaches are an increasingly prominent technique for designing agricultural strategies within Sub-Saharan Africa. However, such approaches are frequently criticized for either not involving enough stakeholders or limiting the ...

There are a number of potential opportunities associated with agricultural, food, and water nanotechnology for the poor, but to achieve such opportunities a number of challenges need to be overcome. This paper first provides a rapid assessment of ...

In recent decades India has achieved one of the fastest economic growth rates in the world, yet its progress against both child and adult undernutrition has been sluggish at best. While this Indian variant of the so-called Asian enigma presents ...

Although adequate country capacity is considered to be one of the critical missing factors in development outcomes, a lack of understanding of how capacity contributes to economic development and of how to account for the contribution of capacity ...

We investigate the impacts of sustainable land management practices on soil carbon stocks and also impacts of soil carbon on the mean and variance of crop production using econometric tools. Using a cross-sectional plot-level dataset collected ...

This study reports theory-testing laboratory experiments on the effect of yardstick competition on corruption. The results reveal that on the incumbent’s side, yardstick competition acts as a corruption-taming mechanism only if the ...

Widespread malnutrition in developing countries calls for appropriate strategies, presupposing good knowledge about nutritional impacts of policies. Little previous work has been carried out in this direction, especially with respect to ...

Many prior studies find significant cross-sectional positive ordinary least squares (OLS) associations between maternal human capital (usually maternal schooling attainment) and children’s human capital (usually children’s schooling, ...

Today’s resource boom in Africa, driven by Asian economic growth, offers new opportunities for resource-rich African countries. Contrary to the experience of previous booms, however, most mining profits now accrue to foreign companies, ...

This study measures the vulnerability of farmers to climatic extremes such as droughts, floods and hailstorms, by employing the “vulnerability as expected poverty” approach. This approach is based on estimating the probability that a given shock ...

The National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) program of Uganda is an innovative public-private extension service delivery approach, with the goal of increasing market oriented agricultural production by empowering farmers to demand and ...

This paper examines household asset dynamics and gender-differentiated asset inequality over a 20-year period (1988–2008) in northern Nigeria. We show that the initial endowments of both household capital and livestock holdings are inconsistent ...

The Ugandan coffee industry is facing some serious challenges, including low international prices in the international coffee market, aging coffee trees and declining productivity, and, more recently, the appearance of coffee-wilt disease, which ...

Biofuels provide a new opportunity to enhance economic development in Tanzania. Drawing on detailed cost estimates, we develop a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to estimate the impact of different biofuel production scenarios on ...

South Africa is the only country in Africa that has both adopted genetically modified (GM) crops and developed a functional biosafety system to manage any risks related to the use of GM products. But it is also one of the only countries that ...

This paper is devoted to better understanding of the Brazilian agricultural national policies towards domestic support and implications related to WTO rules. Domestic support has taken central stage in the last years and in light of a global ...

Suicides in general, including farmers’ suicides, are a sad and complex phenomenon. Hence, their underlying causes need to be addressed within an equally complex societal framework. Here, we provide a specific case study on the potential ...

The International Service for National Agricultural Research¾on its own from 2002 until 2003, and as a division of the International Food Policy Research Institute thereafter has studied 124 public-private partnerships in agriculture in nine ...

A simple dynamic panel model is used to capture persistence in poverty. This simple model allows a more accurate derivation of the permanent level of the measure of well-being from which persistent poverty is defined. Using a longitudinal dataset ...

Ghana’s “market queens,” itinerant traders who purchase tomatoes from rural farms and bring them to the large urban markets, are accused of acting as a cartel, both driving down the price farmers receive and driving up the price urban consumers ...

This paper investigates children’s time allocation to schooling, home production, and market production using a unique data set collected from northern Mali. Production shocks from harvest period pest infestations induce households to ...

This paper reviews recent agricultural policy changes in China and presents estimates of domestic support for the period 1996-2005. A set of relevant alternative subsidy-definition scenarios and their effects on the calculated levels of support ...

The formula approach used in many trade negotiations involves large formula cuts in high tariffs, with flexibilities that allow smaller cuts for selected products. Difficulties in evaluating the effects of these exceptions can create major ...

Climate change impacts vary significantly, depending on the scenario and the Global Circulation Model (GCM) chosen. This is particularly true for Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper uses a comprehensive climate change scenario (CCC) based on ensembles ...

Empirical evidence has shown that farmers can adapt to climate change by using sustainable land and water management (SLWM) practices that provide local mitigation benefits, reducing or offsetting the negative effects of climate change at the ...

Using firm-level data from China’s two recent censuses (Industry Census 1995 and Economic Census 2004) and a new measure of clustering (industry proximity), we show that China’s rapid industrialization is marked by increased clustering. A higher ...

This paper analyzes a repeated games model of collective reputation with imperfect public monitoring and perfect local peer monitoring of efforts. Even when peer monitoring is local, firms may achieve higher profits under collective reputation by ...

In this paper we examine the impact of commodity price volatility on calorie attainment and its variability for households at the nutritional poverty line in Bangladesh. We focus on the first two moments of the distribution of calorie consumption ...

The Community Forestry Program in Nepal is a global innovation in participatory environmental governance that encompasses well-defined policies, institutions, and practices. The program addresses the twin goals of forest conservation and poverty ...

Fertilizer consumption rates in Nigeria remains among the lowest in the world despite decades of aggressive subsidization. The extension service in Nigeria has a double-edged impact on fertilizer use in the country; not only can their activities ...

Cassava was imported from Latin America some 300 years ago, and colonial governments in Africa used it as a famine-reserve crop. Over time cassava spread to over 40 countries in Sub-Sahara Africa, and Nigeria is now the largest cassava producer ...

Cotton, textiles, and apparel are critical agricultural and industrial sectors in India. This study provides descriptions of these sectors and examines the key developments emerging domestically and internationally that affect the challenges and ...

A dynamic computable general equilibrium model is developed to assess the impact of the recent global recession and the Chinese government’s stimulus package on China’s economic growth. The model is first used to capture the actual ...

Farmers face a particular set of risks that complicate the decision to borrow. We use a randomized experiment to investigate (1) the role of crop-price risk in reducing demand for credit among famers and (2) how risk mitigation changes farmers’ ...

Uganda introduced the decentralization policy in 1997 under the Local Government Act of 1997 that has since undergone four amendments. The policy inherently decentralized service delivery institutions and their governance in order to improve ...

Using a large household survey data, this study examines the impact of government involvement in agricultural service provision on the use of modern inputs by farmers in Nigeria. The empirical methodology used in this study is based on the ...

Although there is growing evidence of the increasing role of nonfarm activities in rural livelihoods, there is still relatively little empirical evidence regarding the factors that influence smallholder farmers to diversify into nonfarm ...

This study identifies the major methods used by farmers to adapt to climate change in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia, the factors that affect their choice of method, and the barriers to adaptation. The methods identified include use of different crop ...

This paper analyzes the role of social cohesion in economic and institutional development and, broadly, the creation of welfare in Latin America. The paper defines the concept of social cohesion with reference to the notions of social capital and ...

The CAADP is a commitment of African countries to pursue economic growth through agriculture-led development to reduce poverty and hunger on the continent. It stems from the failure of previous interventions on the continent largely attributed to ...

Decentralization is expected to lead to greater efficiency in the allocation of public resources, as subnational governments are said to have better information than central government about the needs for and requirements of public services in ...

Determining the causality between health measures and both income and labor productivity remains an ongoing challenge for economists. This review paper aims to answer the question: Does improved population health lead to higher rates of ...

Analyses of how coveted central-government resources in Africa are shared have shown widespread patronage, ethnic cronyism, and pork-barrel politics. While some governments have attempted to rectify the situation by establishing revenue-sharing ...

This paper examines asset dynamics for husband-owned, wife-owned, and jointly owned assets, using unique longitudinal survey data from rural Bangladesh. Nonparametric and parametric methods are used to examine the shape of the dynamic asset ...

This paper addresses the question of whether Africa is an undertrading continent. We answer this question using a much-improved data set for obtaining predicted trade and by employing methods that correct for bias in estimates of undertrading. ...

China has experienced dramatic economic transformation and is facing the challenge of ensuring steady agricultural growth. This study examines the crop sector by estimating the supply response for major crops in Henan province from 1998 to 2007. ...

The paper develops a metric of structural transformation that can account for the production of new varieties of goods embodying advancements in technological know-how and design. Our measure captures the dynamics of an economy’s ...

In recent years the European Union has sought to transform its trading regime with the ACP countries by advocating reciprocal free trade agreements with them through Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). As a result, the EPA talks were launched ...

This paper aims to assess the rationales for the use of export taxes, in particular in the context of a food crisis. First, we summarize the effects of export taxes using both partial and general equilibrium theoretical models. When large ...

Two possible adaptation options to climate change for Sub-Saharan Africa are analyzed under the SRES B2 scenario. The first scenario doubles the irrigated area in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2050, compared to the baseline, but keeps total crop area ...

In this paper, we present the results of a two-stage expert elicitation (Delphi) study conducted to provide input to contingent valuation (CV) studies. These CV studies are designed to estimate the benefits of various public and private ...

While the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) remains a hotly debated issue in all five Central American countries that are part of the treaty, most discussions are based on preconceived opinions rather than grounded in research-based ...

The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) is one of the main components of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). CAADP is an initiative launched by the African Union Commission (AUC) in 2002 to serve as a ...

Monitoring rural household income is important for governments, donors, nongovernmental organizations, researchers, and others involved with development strategies, because increasing rural household income is a primary objective for achieving ...

Increasingly, research has indicated that in more risky production environments, genetic variation within species and within population increases the ability to respond to the increasing challenges of environmental stress. This paper analyses the ...

United Kingdom (UK) demand for carnations by exporting country was estimated using a production version of the Rotterdam model, and model estimates were used to assess the effects of EU preferential trade agreements on import demand. Of ...

Higher world food prices have led many governments in developing countries to adopt policy measures to mitigate the adverse impact on low-income households. This paper sets out a partial equilibrium framework to evaluate the relative efficiency, ...

In light of an increasing focus on new demand-driven extension approaches that aim at accelerating the adoption of innovative technologies by smallholder farmers in developing countries, greater analysis is needed of the role of rural social ...

US development assistance represents a significant source of funding for many population programs in poor countries. The Mexico City policy, known derisively as the global gag rule, restricts activities of foreign nongovernmental organizations ...

Traditional authorities are powerful leaders alongside the state in Ghana. The chieftaincy has been resilient to “modernization”—maintaining land rights, allegiance from citizens, and influence in rural communities. Nonetheless, there are few ...

Agriculture plays a dominant role in nearly all the countries of East and Central Africa, and many face similar agroecological, climatic, and development challenges. As a result, significant scale economies can be made through the regionalization ...

In this paper we used a dynamic, regionalized computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to analyze the effect of various negative balance of payments shocks on output and employment and the effect of different alternative investment strategies ...

In this paper we attempt to bridge the resilience school of thought and incentive compatibility in livestock disease control policies through a pilot choice experiment study conducted on 104 farm households in the Nasarawa state of Nigeria. The ...

The stochastic frontier production function is used to estimate agricultural efficiency index. Then, controlling for household characteristics and other exogenous variables, the efficiency index is regressed on the probability of being sick. ...

This study provides an overview of the current market situation in the fertilizer industry. In particular, it examines global trends in production, consumption, trade, and prices, with special emphasis given to the level of concentration of the ...

We analyze the effectiveness of a new approach in providing weather index–based insurance products to low-income populations. The approach is based on the concept of providing multiple weather securities that pay a fixed amount if the event ...

Yemen has been facing severe development challenges in recent years, but rapidly depleting oil and water resources combined with large population increases and a lack of job-creating growth are making a difficult situation even more complicated. ...

A rapidly changing world combined with mounting domestic challenges is prompting many Middle East and North African (MENA) countries to rethink their development models and to initiate economic and social reforms. Taking this new momentum as a ...

This paper seeks to provide a consistent and comparable set of data on the trends in the provision of aid to agriculture over time within the framework of changes in the pattern of sectoral distribution of total development aid. Furthermore, it ...

South Africa’s high involuntary unemployment and small informal sector are attributed to an underperforming formal sector and barriers to entry in the informal sector. This paper examines the economywide linkages between the formal and informal ...

An increasing literature examines the association between restricted fetal or early childhood growth and the incidence of diseases in adulthood. Little is known, however, about gender difference in this association. We assess the impact of ...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the gendered impact of the 2007–08 food price crisis using panel data on 1,400 households from rural Ethiopia that were initially surveyed before the onset of the crisis, in 1994–95, 1997, and 2004, and ...

Genetically modified (GM) food crops have the potential to raise agricultural productivity in Asian countries, but they are also associated with the risk of market access losses in sensitive importing countries. We study the potential effects of ...

There is broad consensus among scientists that climate change is altering weather patterns around the world. However, economists are only beginning to develop tools that allow for the quantification of such weather changes on countries’ economies ...

In the second half of the 1990s, a series of developments led to a renewed academic and policy interest in the intersection of macroeconomic policy and poverty issues in developing countries. The focus of that work was domestic macroeconomic ...

This paper examines the recent decentralization of governance in Indonesia and its impact on local infrastructure provision. The decentralization of decisionmaking power to local jurisdictions in Indonesia may have improved the matching of public ...

Globally, most food is produced using soil moisture that comes from precipitation (i.e., “green” water). Moreover, most of the water that reaches plants in irrigated systems also stems from precipitation. Despite this, irrigation (or “blue”) ...

This study compares the impacts of integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) on crop production with use of either mineral fertilizer or organic manure alone. We also investigate the conditions under which .ISFM technology has greater ...

The Lake Victoria region has the highest HIV prevalence in the East African Community, which comprises Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi. This region also has a significant concentration of commercial agricultural plantations, which ...

This paper estimates hedonic models of rental prices to investigate household preferences regarding water services in rural Guatemala. Estimated values for water services are compared across municipal, private, and community-managed water ...

This paper examines the program logic of three nongovernmental, community-based programs with different intervention models to reduce childhood stunting. Two programs, Child Nutrition Program (PNI) and Good Start, focused directly on education ...

Mechanization is a key to agricultural productivity growth in developing countries. Farm implements, ranging from hand tools to draft animals to milling machines to power tillers and tractors, often play complementary roles with each other, and ...

We quantify the importance of peer effects in group lending by estimating a static game of incomplete information. In our model, group members make their repayment decisions simultaneously based on their household and loan characteristics as well ...

Rural households in developing economies frequently use precautionary saving to cope with income risk. Such prudent behavior can be strengthened in transition economies where more risks are typically faced by households during and after reforms. ...

Many countries have recognized the need to revive agricultural advisory or extension services (the terms are used interchangeably here) as a means of using agriculture as an engine of pro-poor growth; reaching marginalized, poor, and female ...

China has used hybrid rice technology to help feed more than 20 percent of the world’s population using just 10 percent of the world’s total arable land. Hybrid rice allowed for a 14 percent reduction in total rice-growing acreage since 1978, ...

Contract farming is seen by proponents as a way to raise small-farm income by delivering technology and market information to small farmers, incorporating them into remunerative new markets. Critics, however, see it as a strategy for agribusiness ...

The Yellow River basin (YRB) is the breadbasket of China and the “cradle of Chinese civilization.” The basin is characterized by severe water scarcity; the ratio of surface water withdrawal to water resources, at 64 percent in 2008, is among the ...

Land degradation, in the form of soil erosion and nutrient depletion, threatens food security and the sustainability of agricultural production in many developing countries. Governments and development agencies have invested substantial resources ...

This paper examines the impact of a large supply-side education intervention in the Philippines, the Third Elementary Education Project, on students’ national achievement test scores. We find that the program significantly increased student test ...

This paper analyzes drivers of global change and their impacts on the current and future availability and accessibility of water resources in the Nile Basin. Drivers include changes in demography, climate, the socioeconomy, and politics, all of ...

This paper examines the impacts of prenatal conditions and water quality on child growth using recent data from Indonesia. Our empirical results show that an increase in birth weight has significant positive effects on children’s subsequent ...

Yemen is an oil-exporting and food-importing country on the Arabian Peninsula with persistently high levels of poverty. The impacts of the food, fuel, and financial global crises are likely to further complicate preexisting conditions of internal ...

A critical yet often overlooked component of food security is diet quality. Even households who have access to sufficient amounts of food and calories may still lack essential micronutrients, increasing their risk for both short- and long-term ...

This paper uses data collected in an extensive survey of farm costs in the Dong Nai River Basin of Vietnam to estimate the parameters of production functions for rice, vegetables, and coffee. These estimates are then combined with price ...

Decentralization reforms have been the overwhelming response to failures in the targeting of public resources by the central state in developing countries. The policy debate on decentralization typically revolves around several a priori ...

With poverty studies having shifted their focus from household poverty to individual poverty, a number of studies have started to examine ntrahousehold resource allocation, especially gender bias within the household as potential causes of ...

In this study, we examined India’s domestic support policies to understand their classification and measurement for the purposes of official World Trade Organization (WTO) notifications. We then employed the underlying methods to prepare ...

Rural nonfarm development plays a key role in generating employment in many developing countries. Clustering is an important form of industrial organization in the rural nonfarm sector. Based on a primary survey of both urban and rural handloom ...

This report presents the results of a study on local innovation in four peanut-producing regions in Bolivia. It aimed at identifying the type of organizations and mechanisms contributing the most to the adoption of innovations. The theoretical ...

Tomato, cabbage, and garden egg (African eggplant, or Solanum aethiopicum) are important crops for small-scale farmers and migrants in the rural and peri-urban areas of Ghana. Genetic modification has the potential to alleviate poverty through ...

The need for agricultural ministries to have the capacity to develop appropriate policies and effectively implement them is becoming increasingly important as African countries, following on their commitment to Comprehensive Africa Agriculture ...

Like other West African cotton producers, Burkina Faso’s cotton strategy has traditionally involved substantial government intervention in both input and output markets. Despite some notable successes, this state-led strategy became widely ...

Migration and remittances can be used by rural households as a means of insurance, investment, and income augmentation. Ample attention has been given to studying international remittance flows, since for many countries such transfers comprise a ...

Survey and ethnographic methods have been combined in the evaluations of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs for the governments of Nicaragua and Turkey. This paper describes the quantitative and qualitative research designs for these ...

Cereal price variability in Ethiopia has worsened in recent years, and some of the earlier liberalizations are being reversed due to the unacceptable economic and political costs of increased price variability. The challenge now is to achieve ...

Banana is a staple crop consumed by Ugandan households. The Uganda National Agricultural Research Organization has implemented conventional and biotechnology programs that seek improving bananas and address the crop’s most important pest ...

In this paper we investigate the role of poultry in households’ livelihoods portfolios and the impact of supply-and-demand shocks that may be caused by highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) on households’ various livelihoods outcomes in four ...

This paper reviews the trends in government subsidies and investments in and for Indian agriculture; develops a conceptual framework and model to assess the impact of various subsidies and investments on agricultural growth and poverty reduction; ...

Despite its strong growth record, Botswana faces two prominent development challenges: the onslaught of HIV/AIDS and the slowdown in diamond mining. This study estimates the growth and distributional impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and considers ...

There have been intensive debates on the role of aid in promoting economic development in developing countries by using cross-country analyses. Cross-country regression assuming linear relationship between aid and growth and without taking into ...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of Japan’s agricultural domestic policy since 1995 in the context of the current international negotiations in the WTO Doha Round, which has as one aim further reductions of ...

Water management in the Pirapama River Basin in northeastern Brazil is affected by both water quantity and water quality constraints. The region is known for significant sugarcane-based ethanol production—which is key to the Brazilian economy and ...

In 2006, India proposed a draft rule requiring the labeling of all genetically modified (GM) foods and products derived thereof. In this paper, we use primary and secondary market data to assess the economic implications of introducing such a ...

Vietnamese land-tenure policy reforms were embedded into general economic reforms (Doi Moi), enabling the country’s transition toward a market economy. Since 1998, they were implemented incrementally together with complementary instruments such ...

Livestock are an important element of the livelihoods of many Ugandan households, and considerable efforts at economic development by the government of Uganda have focused on the livestock sector. However, these development efforts have suffered ...

This paper examines how political institutions and local power structures interact with and influence local public resource allocation in the Indian state of Karnataka. We use data from 80 village councils and 225 villages to examine how this ...

Using agricultural household survey data and claim records from insurers for the year 2009, this paper analyzes hog producers’ choice of means of loss prevention and identifies the relationships among biosecurity practices, vaccination, and hog ...

Despite the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which brought to an end 20 years of civil war in the Sudan, this country continues to experience smaller-scale conflicts, particularly around access to and control of natural resources. Some ...

Contemporary policy debates on the macroeconomics of resource booms often concentrate on the short-run Dutch disease effects of public expenditure, ignoring the possible long-term effects of alternative revenue-allocation options and the ...

How research contributes to the policy process in developing countries in general, and in Nigeria more specifically, is not well understood. Yet such understanding is a critical part of doing effective policy research. This has become especially ...

This paper examines the effect of AIDS-related mortality of the prime age adult population on marriage behavior among women in Malawi. A rise in prime-age adult mortality increases risks associated with the search for a marriage partner in the ...

The rapidly changing nature of the global food and agriculture system suggests the need to rethink how innovation can contribute to developing-country agriculture. While scientific and technological changes in agriculture can help foster ...

This paper examines a subjective measure of child labor as an alternative to hours data for eliciting the distribution of children’s time between work, school, and leisure. The subjective child labor questions that were developed have two primary ...

The paper develops indicators to look at the performance of the irrigation sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, where demand for food is high and irrigation has a proven potential to boost levels of agricultural productivity. By looking at six indicator ...

Adaptation to climate change involves changes in agricultural management practices in response to changes in climate conditions. It often involves a combination of various individual responses at the farm-level and assumes that farmers have ...

This paper uses data envelopment analysis and new data from Burkina Faso to test the impact of intercontinental and continental migration on technical efficiency in the production of two cereals-millet and sorghum-by rural households. Econometric ...

We investigate the extent in which northern Nigerian households engage in internal migration to insure against ex ante and ex post agricultural risk due to weather-related variability and shocks. We use data on the migration patterns of ...

A tremendous increase in the number of orphans associated with a sharp rise in prime-age adult mortality due to AIDS has become a serious problem in Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, more than 30 percent of school-aged children have lost at least one ...

A growing body of evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs can have strong, positive effects on a range of welfare indicators for poor households in developing countries. However, the contribution of individual program ...

The closely interlinked food, fuel and financial crises pose a significant new challenge to the global effort to reduce poverty. In short run, the oil-biofuels nexus was clearly the driving force behind the surge in food prices, but export ...

As a result of the Uruguay round, Norway was committed to reducing its domestic support for agriculture, in particular its aggregate measurement of support (AMS), which was to be reduced by 20 percent. We show that Norway has complied with its ...

This article analyzes the on-site and off-site economic impacts of various sustainable land management (SLM) practices in Kenya. Long-term trial data are used to establish the relationship between SLM practices and maize yield. The analysis of ...

The risk of food insecurity due to climate change in developing countries has encouraged development partners to seek new approaches to improve the resilience of subsistence agriculture to covariate shocks. Such innovative approaches include ...

Knowledge of the characteristics and size of the agricultural input sector of a country is critical for policymakers to design appropriate interventions that not only foster growth in the sector, but also support the agricultural development ...

Despite the fact that nonincome dimensions of well-being such as nutrition and health are now placed on the global development agenda, substantial gaps remain in our knowledge about patterns and trends in nutrition inequalities in many developing ...

The spread of modern varieties and hybrids of pearl millet and sorghum that began in the mid-1960s has had an important impact on small farmer welfare in India. The success and sustainability of these improved cultivars resulted from three types ...

Petroleum subsidy reform is increasingly seen as an opportunity for consolidating public finances and fostering sustainable economic development. Yemen, as the country with the lowest per capita income in the group of countries with a high level ...

Despite more than a decade of policies placing high priority on cereal intensification, backed by one of the highest rates of public expenditures on agricultural in Africa, Ethiopia has yet to see payoffs in terms of higher and more stable cereal ...

A primary motivation for this study is to identify a key set of policy options for improving fertilizer markets in West Africa (among Economic Community of West African States member countries) in ways that ultimately will help improve the ...

We conduct framed trust games using contract dairy farmers in Vietnam as first movers to assess the impact of potential collusion on trust. Disaggregated analysis suggests that female farmers are more likely to trust overall, but are also more ...

The poverty rate and income transfer are clearly correlated. However, not much research has attempted to determine the causal linkage between the two. Previous research has primarily focused on the poverty-reducing impact of income transfer. In ...

Despite the promise of many new farm technologies, technology adoption rates in Ethiopia remain low. This paper studies the impact of social networks on technology adoption through social learning. In addition to geographic networks, intentional ...

Migration can serve as an outlet for employment, higher earnings, and reduced income risk for households in developing countries. We use the 2004-2005 Human Development Profile of India survey to examine correlations between the receipt of ...

The study estimates a conditional mean model for international wheat prices and inventories. Endogenous price volatility and exogenous shocks in the price and inventory series are controlled for in estimation. Redressing the empirical linkage ...

This paper documents the factors driving the impressive growth in fertilizer use and maize productivity in Kenya since the early 1990s up to 2007. The basic story is one of synergies between liberalization of input and maize markets and public ...

In view of the market failures and the state failures inherent in providing agricultural extension, community-based approaches, which involve farmers‘ groups, have gained increasing importance in recent years as a third way to provide this ...

This study is part of a collaborative project between the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Arab Planning Institute in Kuwait on public policy and poverty reduction in the Arab region. The purpose of this paper is to assess ...

This paper reviews the purpose and potential of commodity exchanges in Africa. Drawing from the existing literature and using indicative empirics, it examines the conditions that enable successful exchanges, highlights the special challenges to ...

“Using original data collected about growers, traders, processors, markets, and village communities, we compare the situation in four states - Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Orissa. We examine the way that information about ...

Fiscal federalism has been argued to intensify regional competition and promote economic growth. This paper is the first, to our knowledge, to empirically assess the patterns and extent of strategic tax competition between geographically ...

Using district-level data on public expenditures from 2000 to 2006, and household-level production data from the 2005/06 Ghana Living Standards Survey, this paper estimates the returns to different types of public investments across four ...

The 1990’s dealt a blow to traditional Heckscher-Ohlin analysis of the relationship between trade and income inequality, as it became clear that rising inequality in low- income countries and other features of the data were inconsistent ...

In order to realize agricultural potential and to increase agricultural yields, India’s extension system has experienced major conceptual, structural, and institutional changes since the late 1990s. This paper reviews existing reform ...

The development pattern in Ghana is characterised by a north-south divide in which the north lags far behind the south. This paper sets out to identify avenues for pro-poor growth in Ghana, focussing on agricultural opportunities, particularly in ...

The current global agreement governing food aid-the Food Aid Convention (FAC)-will expire in 2007. It has come under heavy criticism as has the diffuse set of broader food aid governance institutions that has emerged in the last 50 years. These ...

Endowed with 80 million hectares of arable land (of which only 10 percent are used), diverse climatic conditions, and abundant water resources, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has the potential to become the breadbasket of the entire ...

From 2003 to their peak in mid 2008, the nominal prices of maize and wheat roughly doubled, while those of rice tripled in a matter of months rather than years. Although fundamental factors were clearly responsible for shifting the world to a ...

This paper analyzes how Cambodian farmers and the Cambodian government can respond to increasing rice prices. The study estimates rice production responses in Cambodia using the Cambodian Socio-Economic Surveys (CSES) conducted in 2004 and 2007. ...

The Genetic Improvement of Farmed Tilapia (GIFT) project, which operated from 1988–97, served as a launching point for tilapia improvement efforts in Asia, as well as tropical finfish genetic improvements globally. Based on the selective breeding ...

This paper uses panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi to examine the impacts of natural disasters on schooling investments, with a particular focus on the roles of ex-ante actions and ex-post responses. We find that the importance of ...

Agriculture in Ethiopia is changing. New players, relationships, and policies are influencing how smallholders access and use information and knowledge. Although this growing complexity suggests opportunities for Ethiopian smallholders, too ...

This paper investigates the contribution of rural non-farm income to income inequality by examining the contribution of specific income sources (farm income from irrigated agriculture, farm income from rainfed agriculture and non-farm income) to ...

This research assesses the effects of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards in international trade by introducing a new concept, bridge to cross (BTC), with product standards. The BTC in this paper is the regulatory gap between the exporting ...

Over the last two decades, several seed-related programs have been initiated in eastern Kenya to improve farmers’ access to quality seeds of dryland cereals and legumes. They are provided during two occasions, regular and emergency times. ...

This paper discusses the application of the equilibrium displacement model (EDM) to estimate ex-ante the welfare effects of biological productivity growth for semi-subsistence crop and its impact on poverty reduction. The conventionally used EDM ...

Natural disasters have particularly devastating impacts on economic growth in developing countries because they impede the accumulation of capital. The resilience of labor markets is crucial especially for the poor who rely only on labor to ...

La innovación es de suma importancia para el desarrollo productivo en la agricultura Boliviana, por tratarse de un sector caracterizado por bajos niveles de innovación en cuanto a la incorporación de nueva tecnología y conocimiento en los ...

This paper examines social learning regarding HIV infection, using HIV test results and sibling death data from Malawi. In the analysis, we compare hypotheses on social learning, selection. and common factors. Empirical results show that young ...

This study investigates the impact of different soil and water conservation technologies on the variance of crop production in Ethiopia to determine the risk implications of the different technologies in different regions and rainfall zones. ...

This paper uses household panel and village census data from Indonesia to examine the impact of spatial connectivity (road) development on household income growth and nonagricultural labor supply. The empirical results show that the impacts of ...

Holding strategic grain reserves to address food price hikes has received renewed attentions in recent years. This paper examines such a program in Ethiopia that has been successful in addressing several emergencies since the 1990s. The analysis ...

This paper examines the role of postsecondary agricultural education and training (AET) in Sub-Saharan Africa in the context of the region’s agricultural innovation systems. Specifically, the paper looks at how AET in Sub-Saharan Africa can ...

Pig production in the Philippines has intensified in the urban and peri-urban areas in response to a radical structural change in the pig industry and a growing demand for pork products. Alongside this rapid growth is the emergence of societal ...

This paper attempts to estimate the future supply and demand for cereals in Nepal. While there has been considerable research in the past examining the agricultural sector in Nepal, to the best of our knowledge there has been no analysis of the ...

With the Biotech Revolution, questions are being asked about what role the government should play in the process-does public research in developing countries play a role? Can governments speed the spread of technology by offering complementary ...

This paper explores and compares the impact of different types of public spending on rural household welfare in Ethiopia. The analysis of public financial and household-level data reveals that returns to road investments are significantly higher ...

Argentine agriculture has undergone significant transformations over the past three decades. After a long period of stagnant production and productivity, starting in the early 1970s, a number of independent but interconnected events fostered a ...

This paper examines the potential benefits and costs of providing duty-free, quota-free (DFQF) market access to the least developed countries and the effects of extending eligibility for DFQF access to other small and poor countries. Using the ...

Attention to land degradation and environmental pollution has increased significantly in the past 25 years, largely due to greater levels of international cooperation and recognition that local changes in land resources have global impacts. As ...

By using a global computable general equilibrium model, this report analyzes the impact of various pending free trade agreements for Peru. In December 2007, a Peru-United States free trade agreement (FTA) was finally ratified by the U.S. ...

We use two rounds of surveys, taken in 2000 and 2008 in the Zhili Township children’s garment cluster in Zhejiang Province, to examine in depth the evolution of this industrial cluster. Firm size has grown on average in terms of output and ...

Global retail chains are becoming increasingly dominant in the global food trade and their rise leads to dramatic impacts on agricultural supply chains and on small producers. However, the prospects and impacts of a food retail revolution in poor ...

This paper strives to introduce a discussion of the gender dimensions into the growing debate on large-scale land deals. It addresses the current information gap on the differential gender effects of large-scale land deals through (1) an overview ...

The need to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has raised the profile of social sector investments in Africa and other developing countries. As a result, many African countries are pressured to emphasize short-term concerns related ...

This paper investigates whether public investments that led to improvements in road quality and increased access to agricultural extension services led to faster consumption growth and lower rates of poverty in rural Ethiopia. Estimating an ...

In this paper we develop a dynamic CGE model to examine the impact of CAFTA on production, employment and poverty in El Salvador. We model four aspects of the agreement: tariff reductions, quotas, changes in the rules of origin for maquila and ...

We combined a hydro-crop model with a dynamic general equilibrium (DCGE) model to assess the impacts of climate variability and change on economic growth and poverty reduction in Zambia. The hydro-crop model is first used to estimate the impact ...

Global climate change influences the economic performance of all countries, and Indonesia is no exception. Under climate change, Indonesia is predicted to experience temperature increases of approximately 0.8°C by 2030. Moreover, rainfall ...

Bangladesh has made notable progress in achieving food security, despite extreme population pressures, limited land resources, and an agrarian structure dominated by small and tenant farmers. After two decades of sluggish performance prior to the ...

Malaria afflicts many people in the developing world, and due to its direct and indirect costs it has widespread impacts on growth and development. The global impact of malaria on human health, productivity, and general well-being is profound. ...

Mungbean is a major pulse crop in Asia. National partners in Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand collaborated with AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center, using an integrated, interdisciplinary approach ...

The objective of this paper is to review the agricultural trade and domestic policies of the Philippines and to provide an assessment of the types and levels of domestic support relative to the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Changes ...

This paper presents an innovative participatory method to visualize, discuss and analyze the power of different actors in a given governance field. The Power Mapping Tool was first used to analyze the governance effects of Community-Based Natural ...

In Bangladesh—one of the poorest countries in Asia, where rice accounts for almost 70 percent of consumers’ caloric intake—the share of the less expensive, low-quality coarse rice is shown to be rapidly decreasing in rice markets and the quality ...

This study presents a stylized but insightful diagnostic of the problems limiting collective action in Ghanaian farmer-based organizations (FBOs). In our analysis, we use a structure-conduct-performance framework, econometrics, and new primary ...

Wenzhou used to be one of the poorest regions in eastern China. With limited arable land, poor road access to major cities, and little support from the upper level governments, this region seemed to lack all the conditions necessary for economic ...

Rising demands for quality and safety measures in high-value agriculture and livestock markets have necessitated the creation of increasingly complex supply chains to manage the flow of goods and information among channel actors. Public–private ...

We herein investigate the short-run macroeconomic impact of aid in small developing countries (SDCs) by using a vector auto regression (VAR) model to study the impact of aid on net import (absorption) and domestic demand (spending). We focus on ...

The recent global food and financial crises have reversed the last decade’s progress in reducing hunger and poverty. This paper conducts a factor and sequential typology analysis to identify groups of countries categorized according to five ...

The last several years have seen an unprecedented cooperation in trade and investment between Asia and Latin America. Since 2003 an average of 2.2 regional trade agreements (RTAs)* per year have been signed between countries of these two regions, ...

We examine the effect of trade protection rates on evasion in three African countries: Kenya, Mauritius, and Nigeria. In capturing the effect of trade protection on tariff evasion, we use a much improved measure of trade protection from MacMAP ...

In Mali, liberalization of seed markets for sorghum and millet, the staple food crops, has not advanced at the same rate or with the same measurable success as liberalization of grain markets. Most seed of these crops is uncertified and continues ...

Climate change is expected to have serious environmental, economic, and social impacts on South Africa. In particular, rural farmers, whose livelihoods depend on the use of natural resources, are likely to bear the brunt of adverse impacts. The ...

In this paper we present the findings of a qualitative investigation into some dimensions and implications of policy volatility in the realms of natural resource (NR) governance and devolution in contemporary Sudan, with particular reference to ...

The prevalence of malnutrition across a predominantly agrarian country like Uganda and its potential economic implications indicate the importance of understanding the link between agricultural productivity and nutrient consumption. Such an ...

This paper examines past and proposed U.S. domestic support in light of current and potential World Trade Organization (WTO) constraints. It provides a brief review of U.S. farm policies since the Uruguay Round WTO agreements went into effect, ...

The NEPAD Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) has been endorsed by African Heads of State and Governments as a vision for the restoration of agricultural growth, food security, and rural development in Africa. The ...

The objective of this study is to validate the World Food Programme’s (WFP) method of establishing the prevalence of food insecurity. WFP’s method has two parts: (1) the construction of a Food Consumption Score (FCS) and (2) the classification of ...

This paper uses farmers’ responses to exogenous weather shocks in South Africa’s Limpopo River Basin to gauge how farmers are apt to respond to future climate change-induced shocks, in particular drought. Droughts are expected to ...

Estimates by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the World Bank concerning the welfare impact of the 2007/08 global food crisis conclude that between 75 million and 160 million people ...

Most investigations into the importance and determinants of adult cognitive skills assume that (1) they are produced primarily by schooling, and (2) schooling is statistically predetermined or exogenous. This study uses longitudinal data ...

As multistakeholder governance has emerged as an important feature in development, new governance structures that foster the participation of multiple stakeholders from the public sector, civil society, and the private sector have emerged in ...

This study tests the null hypothesis that it is sufficient to interview only the household head to obtain accurate information on household income. The results show that using a husband’s estimate of his wife’s income does not produce ...

This paper explores gender differences in cotton cultivation and looks into the perceptions and experiences of women and men with transgenic varieties. With few exceptions, researchers in the area of impact evaluation of crop biotechnology have ...

Between 1978 and 1984, a massive shift from collective to household agricultural production took place in China. These incremental reforms, which Deng Xiaoping called “crossing the river while feeling the rocks,” eventually gave 95 percent—160 ...