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Risk, Insurance and Wages in General Equilibrium
Rosenzweig, Mark; Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
We estimate the general-equilibrium labor market effects of a large-scale randomized intervention in which we designed and marketed a rainfall index insurance product across three states in India. Marketing agricultural insurance to both cultivators and to agricultural wage laborers allows us to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010796570
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Forecasting Profitability
Rosenzweig, Mark; Udry, Christopher - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013
We use newly-available Indian panel data to estimate how the returns to planting-stage investments vary by rainfall realizations. We show that the forecasts significantly affect farmer investment decisions and that these responses account for a substantial fraction of the inter-annual...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010796654
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Deals versus Rules: Policy Implementation Uncertainty and Why Firms Hate It
Hallward-Driemeier, Mary; Pritchett, Lant; Khun-Jush, Gita - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2010
Firms in Africa report "regulatory and economic policy uncertainty" as a top constraint to their growth. We argue that … often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals; firm-specific policy actions that can be … uncorrelated with ex-post firm-level responses, further evidence that deals rather than rules prevail in Africa. Strikingly, the …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008627129
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Effects of Index-Fund Investing on Commodity Futures Prices
Hamilton, James; Wu, Jing Cynthia - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
The last decade brought substantial increased participation in commodity markets by index funds that maintain long positions in the near futures contracts. Policy makers and academic studies have reached sharply different conclusions about the effects of these funds on commodity futures prices....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010739731
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Bubbles, Food Prices, and Speculation: Evidence from the CFTC's Daily Large Trader Data Files
Aulerich, Nicole M.; Irwin, Scott H.; Garcia, Philip - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013
The "Masters Hypothesis" is the claim that unprecedented buying pressure from new financial index investors created a massive bubble in agricultural futures prices at various times in recent years. This paper analyzes the market impact of financial index investment in agricultural futures...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010969324
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The Sahel's Silent Maize Revolution: Analyzing Maize Productivity in Mali at the Farm-level
Foltz, Jeremy D.; Aldana, Ursula T.; Laris, Paul - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012
increased fertilizer use has driven much of the productivity growth rather than the adoption of improvements in seeds and … fertilizer amounts and the marginal returns to fertilizer use. The results demonstrate the key changes behind this silent maize … fertilizer. …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009652803
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Estimating Ricardian Models With Panel Data
Mendelsohn, Robert Owen - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011
Many nonmarket valuation models, such as the Ricardian model, have been estimated using cross sectional methods with a single year of data. Although multiple years of data should increase the robustness of such methods, repeated cross sections suggest the results are not stable. We argue that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009652846
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Supply and Effects of Specialty Crop Insurance
Ligon, Ethan - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011
The federal government has developed a large number of programs to insure various "specialty crops" over the last two decades; a given program is peculiar to a particular county and crop. This development has been particularly notable in California, because of its size and the diversity of crops...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008805813
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Self-Selection into Credit Markets: Evidence from Agriculture in Mali
Karlan, Dean; Udry, Christopher; Beaman, Lori; … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
We partnered with a micro‐lender in Mali to randomize credit offers at the village level. Then, in no- loan control villages, we gave cash grants to randomly selected households. These grants led to higher agricultural investments and profits, thus showing that liquidity constraints bind with...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010969288
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Agricultural Decisions after Relaxing Credit and Risk Constraints
Karlan, Dean; Udry, Christopher; Osei, Robert Darko; … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012
The investment decisions of small‐scale farmers in developing countries are conditioned by their financial environment. Binding credit market constraints and incomplete insurance can reduce investment in activities with high expected profits. We conducted several experiments in northern Ghana...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010969291