We build upon international trade literature to analyze the direction of causality between market participation and productivity. Cross-country household data from Tanzania, Vietnam and Guatemala are used in a 2SLS approach with market participation and productivity as endogenous variables....

This research uses field-level data from Burkina Faso to ask what determines farmers' investment in two well-known soil and water conservation techniques: field bunds (barriers to soil and water runoff), and microcatchments (small holes in which seeds and fertilizers are placed). Survey data for...

The eradication of child undernutrition and extreme poverty are important objectives for most societies. Countries with higher national incomes usually improve in both dimensions, but not always at the same rate. Using quantile regression, we show that poverty rates tend to decline with...

This paper tests uses nationally representative data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to test whether a household’s market access, defined in terms of travel costs to the nearest town, facilitates resilience and reduces vulnerability to seasonal influences on child nutrition....

Much of the world's agricultural productivity growth over the past fifty years has been attributed to the international spillover of benefits from research and develop- ment (Alston, 2002). Because the impact of these spillovers often varies with distance, geography, and climate, attention has...

Recent studies have emphasized that the poorest farmers are often net buyers of key commodities and therefore harmed by rising prices. We use LSMS data from Tanzania, Vietnam and Guatemala to test the degree of net purchases or sales by income level. We find that poorer farmers may be net buyers...

This study links intertemporal optimization to a biophysical crop growth model finding that agricultural intensification does not dramatically degrade soils in southern Mali. Productivity growth can be sustained through adoption of new techniques, particularly with policy reforms to reduce...

This paper uses an experimental-economics technique to measure the potential impact of introducing quality certification to the market for infant foods in Mali, where malnutrition is widespread. We find that certification could substantially lower food costs, generating net economic benefits on...

In this paper, we use a vintage-capital model with risk of eviction to assess cocoa farmers' response to changes in their tenure security and to the introduction of a new, faster-maturing cocoa variety. The model is calibrated with data from Cameroon in calendar year 2000, and then used to...

Malnutrition is manifested in various degrees of both underweight and overweight, with large differences and rapid changes in their prevalence and severity. This paper introduces a new approach to characterizing the distribution of a population’s nutritional status, to help analyze changes in...