Communities adjacent to forest are faced with a challenge of balancing their labour allocation decisions to the different household activities. This study was done around Kakamega forest in Western Kenya and examined empirically the factors influencing households’ labour allocation to...

Personal networks can help rural workers find urban jobs. Moreover, when the information flow increases due to the mobile phone coverage expansion, the new information flow may strengthen the existing personal networks or bypass them, helping those who were previously outside the networks in the...

The emphasis of education as a driving force for the growth of agricultural productivity can be dated back to the early 1960s. However, most empirical work failed to take into account of the fact that production technology changes with time and consequently obscure the true contribution of...

In this paper we analyse the indirect effects of the boom in horticultural exports in Senegal on child schooling. The export boom has caused a dramatic increase in female off-farm wage employment, which led to increased female bargaining power in the household. We investigate the causal effect...

This paper examines changes in the allocation of public funds between production related public goods (PRPGs) and labour augmenting public goods (LAPGs) once elected village leaders replaced an appointment system. We derive a two-period theoretical model in which the interest of appointed...

A substantial amount of China’s rapid economic growth in has been attributed to its large proportion of rural-urban migrants, but more than 80% of these migrants’ children are still left in rural areas mainly due to China’s household registration system. Identification of the impact of...

This study investigates smallholder farmer participation in biofuels-related crop and land rental markets and estimates whether participation is associated with farm income. Multinomial treatment-effects models are estimated using farm household data from 247 South African smallholder farmers....

Agricultural employment in industrialized countries has been steadily decreasing despite important levels of farm subsidies. In this paper we provide a new explanation for this puzzle, namely the positive impact of subsidies on the education level of farmers’ children. If farmers are credit...

This paper investigates the effects of network based individual social capital on the access of rural households to services. In the context of development economics, an innovative data collection approach is used to determine network based social capital. The approach originates from the field...

Using a unique panel of rice-producing Chinese households, this paper tests off-farm employment’s effects on agricultural production. We find the sizable rural out-migration in the past two decades has had negligible effects on China’s rice production. This cannot be explained by farm labor...