Levels and composition of food consumption are major determinants of the nutritional wellbeing of individuals, which in turn, have important implications for health, productivity, and income. Analyzing food consumption patterns in poor countries, such as Ethiopia, is therefore pivotal to...

We investigate the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. Using detailed longitudinal household survey data and employing a difference-in-differences approach, we find that iddir membership improves...

Studying the sources of growth in agricultural production, examining the extent of inefficiency, and identifying the sources of such inefficiency, is an important step forward to improve the livelihood of subsistence farm households in developing countries. A stochastic frontier analysis is used...

How households adjust their consumption in response to changes in prices and income is crucial determinant of the effects of various shocks to market prices and commodity supplies. These adjustments in demand are particularly significant in Ethiopia, where many households consume inadequate...

Ethiopia is known to have one of the largest livestock populations in the world. Yet the overall contribution of livestock products to households’ daily consumption is very limited. The average per capita annual consumption of meat and dairy products are just 4.6 kg and 16.7 kg,...

In recent years, microfinance institutions are seen as beacons of hope to help eradicate poverty through, among others, providing credit to poor rural households. Availability of small but repeated loans is, in the long-term, expected to impact on poverty. However, decades after the introduction...

This paper contributes new empirical evidence and nuanced analysis on the gender difference in access to extension services and how this translates to observed differences in technology adoption and agricultural productivity. We employ a cross-sectional instrumental-variable regression method...

In this paper we examine which farmers would be early entrants into weather indexinsurance markets in Ethiopia, were such markets to develop on a large scale. We do this by examining the determinants of willingness to pay for weather insurance among 1,400 Ethiopian households that have been...

In Ethiopia, as in many other African countries, there is a pressing need to improve household food security. An emerging consensus suggests that this is most easily accomplished through two development strategies with two complementary dimensions: investments that facilitate income generation...