Constructing appropriate counterfactual scenarios is an ongoing challenge for impact assessment of agricultural research. Using farm-level survey data from Honduras, this paper adapts the Heckman two-step procedure to construct the counterfactual to resistant variety (RV) bean yields by...

This study analyzes the implications of increasing population density in Kenya’s rural areas on smallholder production and commercialization. Using data from five panel surveys on 1,146 small-scale farms over the 1997-2010 period, we use econometric techniques to determine how increasing rural...

Multi-year nationwide survey data is used to estimate maize yield response functions and determine profitability of fertilizer use by small-scale farmers in Zambia. Most previous research on economics of fertilization used estimates of yield response to nutrients based on experimental or...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/18/06.

Despite their strain on government and donor budgets, fertilizer subsidies have once again become popular policy tools in several Sub-Saharan Africa countries as a potential way to increase yields in staple crops like maize. Policy makers often assume that farmers who receive the subsidy will...

Replaced with revised version of poster on 07/23/10.

For the past half-century, African governments and development agencies have experimented with a series of alternative approaches for addressing rural poverty, each giving way to a new paradigm as the persistence of poverty created disillusionment with prevailing approaches. These broad...

This study uses panel data from 1,142 Kenya smallholder households over four survey periods to examine the determinants of participation in land rental markets and to quantify the impact of renting land on households’ crop income and total income. We find that land rental markets in Kenya...

Constrained access to land is increasingly recognized as a problem impeding rural household welfare in densely populated areas of Africa. This study utilizes household and plot level data from rural Kenya to explore the linkage between land access and food security. We find that a 10% increase...