Why do men and women adopt agricultural technologies at different rates? Evidence from Ghana suggests that gender-linked differences in the adoption of modern maize varieties and chemical fertilizer are not attributable to inherent characteristics of the technologies themselves but instead...

Factors affecting the diffusion of hybrid maize are explored using a unique data set from 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our findings not only validate the conventional profitability-based explanations of farmer adoption behavior, but also confirm the importance of supply-side...

Interest in the economics of plant breeding first emerged during the late 1960s and early 1970s following the well-known green revolutions in wheat and rice. Since that time, few branches of agricultural research have been subjected to as much scrutiny as plant breeding. Impacts assessment...

In 2000, as part of its strategy for growth and poverty reduction, the Government of Rwanda set a goal to increase per capita income from US$230 to US$900 and halve the incidence of poverty by 2020. Two years after those targets were established Rwanda's first Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper...

Replaced with revised version of paper 08/29/02.

Perceptions of risk may vary within households as well as across households and communities. In this paper, we take advantage of panel survey data collected quarterly over a period of 2 ½ years to see how perceptions of risk vary across individuals over time. The surveyed households are in...

Three issues regarding gender patterns of cropping in Ghana are examined to disentangle whether observed patterns are based on gender or on factors correlated with gender. First, can "men's" and "women's" crops can be distinguished in household survey data? Second, is gender is a determinant of...