The dramatic increase in the price of rice and other commodities over the past year has generated new interest in how these markets work and how they can be improved. This article uses an exceptionally rich data set to test the extent to which markets in Madagascar are integrated across space at...

This study explores the constraints on agricultural productivity and priorities in boosting productivity in rice, the main staple in Madagascar, using a range of different data sets and analytical methods, integrating qualitative assessments by farmers and quantitative evidence from panel data...

This article explores the useful distinction between chronic and transitory poverty in understanding rural welfare dynamics, highlighting the possibility of poverty traps and their implications for "cargo net" policies to build up productive assets and "safety net" policies to protect such...

This article explores the dynamics of smallholder technology adoption, with particular reference to a high-yielding, low external input rice production method in Madagascar. We present a simple model of technology adoption by farm households in an environment of incomplete financial and land...

This article introduces a method for estimating structural labor supply models in the presence of unobservable wages and deviations of households' marginal revenue product of self-employed labor from their shadow wage. This method is therefore robust to a wide range of assumptions about labor...

Studies of fertilizer use in sub-Saharan Africa have been dominated by analyses of economic and market factors having to do with infrastructure, institutions, and incentives that prevent or foster increased fertilizer demand, largely ignoring how soil fertility status conditions farmer demand...