This paper analyzes the household level impact of an increase in price of major tradable staple foods in a cross section of developing countries, using nationally representative household surveys. We find that, in the short term, poorer households and households with limited asset endowments and...

This paper shows the importance of explicitly considering marketing margins in analyses of the impact of price changes on the welfare of different segments of the population. Failure to acknowledge the implicit marketing assumptions embedded in an analysis that assumes equal percentage changes...

Eggs have been important elements of cooking and nutrition in Indonesia for centuries, mostly supplied from ducks and backyard chickens. Consumption of layer eggs has increased 12-fold over the past 30 years, and prices are lowered in central areas of the country. In the outer islands, however,...

In developing countries, when markets are incomplete migration can have multiple effects on agricultural production. In this paper, I use instrumental variables techniques to explore the effects of seasonal migration on agricultural production in rural Vietnam during the 1990s. Instrumenting...

In the light of an expanding rural non-farm (RNF) sector in developing rural economies, this paper explores the effects of this expansion within the household. Using rural Ghana as a case study this paper explores if the RNF economy allows for economies of diversification within farms; how input...

This article proposes a general pattern of rural development in which rises in per capita income are associated with a decline in the importance of agricultural production and a rise in the importance of non-agricultural income sources. Following the approach to examining Engel’s Law, we use...

Agriculture and livestock are key components of the livelihoods of the poor. Livestock make a substantial contribution to household livelihoods’ and currently sustain the livelihoods of an estimated 700 million rural poor in developing countries. In Nepal, poverty levels are extremely high and...

Using an ethnographic approach, this study explores small-scale farmers’ perceived transaction costs in relation to maize seed acquisition in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca. These farmers have different needs and require seed of diverse maize types with multiple traits in particular...

The past four decades have seen two waves of agricultural technology development and diffusion to developing countries. The first wave was initiated by the Green Revolution in which an explicit strategy for technology development and diffusion targeting poor farmers in poor countries made...

Land use change is a key requirement for improving rural incomes and making a significant reduction in poverty levels globally. Over 70% of the world’s poor are located in rural areas, with land use as a major source of subsistence. Improving the productivity of their land use systems is...