There has been a decline in crop productivity in Kenya, a situation that has contributed to the raising food insecurity in the country. Communities in arid and semi-arid areas of the country, the landless, and female headed households are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity. Given the...

The non-farm sector is crucial to rural households in transition economies since it offers employment, reduces urban migration and can contribute to poverty reduction, economic growth and a more equal income distribution. This study on diversification decisions and rural incomes reviews evidence...

The measurement of per capita daily expenditures which are compared with a monetary poverty line is the most widely used approach regarding poverty assessment. It is, however, based on the implementation of time and cost-intensive household surveys and, therefore, not an operational method for...

The encroachment of protected areas for agricultural and livestock production is an important challenge for nature conservation in developing countries. The driving forces of encroachment are debated - major arguments focus on (1) the need of local people to cultivate land inside protected areas...

Ecosystem services generate benefits that enter human consumption either directly or indirectly via their contribution to human production activities. In this contribution, we provide evidence that (i) the demand of peasants for ecosystem services in rural Indonesia depends on relative poverty;...

PWR is a participatory poverty assessment method that uses the ratings of local reference groups concerning the relative poverty status of households in their community. This paper assesses the accuracy of PWR in predicting absolute (income) poverty, and compares PWR with three other poverty...

Moral hazard is widely reported as a problem in credit and insurance markets, mainly arising from information asymmetry. Although theorists have attempted to explain the success of Joint Liability Lending (JLL) schemes in mitigating moral hazard, empirical studies are rare. This paper...

Historically low prices in the conventional coffee market have caused financial and social hardship among coffee farmers. In the face of this crisis, specialty markets have attracted the attention of the international donor community. These market segments have shown consistent growth over the...

Crop production in the tropics is subject to considerable climate variability caused by the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. In Southeast Asia, El Niño causes comparatively dry conditions leading to substantial declines of crop yields. In concert with global warming, the...

Developing accurate, yet operational poverty assessment tools to target the poorest households remains a challenge for applied policy research. This paper aims to develop poverty assessment tools for four countries: Bangladesh, Peru, Uganda, and Kazakhstan. The research applies the Principal...