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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

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Elodie Becquey

Elodie Becquey is a Senior Research Fellow in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit, based in IFPRI’s West and Central Africa office in Senegal. She has over 15 years of research experience in diet, nutrition, and food security in Africa, including countries such as Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania.

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Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Mehrab Bakhtiar

Research Fellow

Bio

Mehrab Bakhtiar is a Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. A Bangladeshi development economist, he uses experimental and non-experimental methods to study the impact of interventions related to social protection, nutrition, and agriculture with a special focus on women’s empowerment and intrahousehold decision-making. He has carried out research in Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. As Deputy Chief of Party of the Feed the Future Bangladesh Agricultural Policy Activity, he has helped lead IFPRI’s policy engagements, research outreach, and implementation of national and sub-national surveys in Bangladesh since 2019.

Prior to his work with IFPRI, Bakhtiar worked as a Research Analyst at the Africa Gender Innovation Lab at the World Bank and was selected in the World Bank’s Young Professionals Program in 2019. Before heading to graduate school, he was a Research Coordinator at Innovations for Poverty Action, Bangladesh. He received his PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from University of Maryland–College Park, where his doctoral research was recognized by the Dr. and Mrs. Bill V. Lessley Dissertation Excellence Award.

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Publications

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Gender, nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions, and resilience: Evidence from rural Bangladesh

2025Hoddinott, John F.; Ahmed, Akhter; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Quisumbing, Agnes R.
Details

Gender, nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions, and resilience: Evidence from rural Bangladesh

We assess whether a gender- and nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions, fielded in rural Bangladesh, aimed at improving food production diversity enhanced resilience and whether impacts persisted post-intervention. Four years post-program, treatment arms that included both agriculture and nutrition training reduced the likelihood that households undertook more severe forms of coping strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic. There were persistent improvements in household consumption and diet quality; impacts were largest for poor but not the poorest households in our sample. Underlying these results were the long-term beneficial impacts on women’s agricultural knowledge, agency, and increased engagement in agricultural activities.

Year published

2025

Authors

Hoddinott, John F.; Ahmed, Akhter; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Quisumbing, Agnes R.

Citation

Hoddinott, John F.; Ahmed, Akhter; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; and Quisumbing, Agnes R. 2025. Gender, nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions, and resilience: Evidence from rural Bangladesh. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2375. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/177816

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Southern Asia; Resilience; Shocks; Gender; Nutrition

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Agricultural mechanization policy in Bangladesh: An assessment of the phase III support program and recommendations for reform

2025Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Mahzab, Moogdho; Karim, Md. Aminul; Shamma, Raisa; Belton, Ben; Talukder, Md. Ruhul Amin; Kabir, Razin; Aravindakshan, Sreejith; Krupnik, Timothy J.; Ahmed, Akhter
Details

Agricultural mechanization policy in Bangladesh: An assessment of the phase III support program and recommendations for reform

This report assesses Bangladesh’s Phase III agricultural mechanization support program (2020–2024), examining the distribution, impacts, and governance of subsidies for agricultural machines—particularly combine harvesters (CHs). We analyze program effectiveness and identify critical imple mentation gaps using mixed-methods research combining administrative data analysis; a representative survey of 979 Machinery Service Providers (MSPs), including 400 CH MSPs sampled across 10 districts representing Bangladesh’s major agroecological zones and mechanization intensity; panel data from over 2,000 nationally representative Boro rice–producing households; and 128 qualitative interviews to analyze program effectiveness and pinpoint critical implementation gaps.

Year published

2025

Authors

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Mahzab, Moogdho; Karim, Md. Aminul; Shamma, Raisa; Belton, Ben; Talukder, Md. Ruhul Amin; Kabir, Razin; Aravindakshan, Sreejith; Krupnik, Timothy J.; Ahmed, Akhter

Citation

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Mahzab, Moogdho M.; Karim, Md. Aminul; Shamma, Raisa; Belton, Ben; Talukder, Md. Ruhul Amin; et al. 2025. Agricultural mechanization policy in Bangladesh: An assessment of the phase III support program and recommendations for reform. Climate Change X Agriculture Working Paper 1. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/176065

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Agricultural Mechanization; Reforms; Subsidies; Combine Harvesters; Surveys

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Journal Article

To defer or to differ: Experimental evidence on the role of cash transfers in Nigerian couples’ decision–making

2025Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Fafchamps, Marcel; Goldstein, Markus; Leonard, Kenneth L.; Papineni, Sreelakshmi
Details

To defer or to differ: Experimental evidence on the role of cash transfers in Nigerian couples’ decision–making

We conduct an original lab-in-the-field experiment on the decision-making process of married couples over the allocation of rival and non-rival household goods. The experiment measures individual preferences over allocations and traces the process of deferral, consultation, communication and accommodation by which couples implement these preferences. We find few differences in individual preferences over allocations of goods. However, wives and husbands have strong preferences over process: women prefer to defer decisions to their husbands even when deferral is costly and is not observed by the husband; men rarely defer under any condition. Our study follows a randomised controlled trial that ended a year earlier and gave large cash transfers over eighteen months to half of the women in the study. We estimate the effect of treatment on the demand for agency among women and find that the receipt of cash transfers does not change women’s bargaining process except in a secret condition when the decision to defer is shrouded from her husband. This suggests that the cash transfer to women increases their demand for agency, but does not change the intrahousehold balance of power enough to allow them to express it publicly.

Year published

2025

Authors

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Fafchamps, Marcel; Goldstein, Markus; Leonard, Kenneth L.; Papineni, Sreelakshmi

Citation

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Fafchamps, Marcel; Goldstein, Markus; Leonard, Kenneth L.; and Papineni, Sreelakshmi. 2025. To defer or to differ: Experimental evidence on the role of cash transfers in Nigerian couples’ decision–making. The Economic Journal 135(669): 1536–1574. https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae117

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Cash Transfers; Decision Making; Marriage; Gender; Households; Resource Allocation

Language

English

Access/Licence

Limited Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae117 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Events

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia: Towards Impact at Scale
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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December 2 to 4, 2025

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia: Towards Impact at Scale

South Asia continues to face an enduring burden of malnutrition in all its forms—undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and a steady increase in overweight and obesity and non-communicable diseases. Over 1 billion people in South Asia cannot afford a healthy diet. While many promising solutions have emerged, translating them into sustained, large-scale impact remains a challenge. This […]

Into, Through and Beyond USAID Programs: Lessons from the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

March 29, 2023, 9:00 – 10:15 am

Into, Through and Beyond USAID Programs: Lessons from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

Virtual Event: March 29, 2023 – 9:00 AM- 10:15 AM EDT. This webinar will mark the launch of two briefs, one on the use cases of WEAI in USAID projects worldwide and the other on how WEAI has informed and supported the design of policies and programs in Bangladesh.