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...

Considerable agreement exists among researchers, development practitioners, and policymakers regarding the goals of sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI). They include: achieving agricultural productivity growth, household food security, and improved rural livelihoods and employment,...

We employ censored least absolute deviations and multivariate Tobit estimators to investigate whether food aid flows from the main donor countries respond to recipient country needs as reflected in low food availability, low income, or both. We also explore the hypothesis that donor countries...