This paper assesses the impact of Ethiopia's flagship social protection program, the Productive Safety Net Program on the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food and nutrition security of households, mothers, and children. The analysis uses pre-pandemic, in-person household survey...

This paper looks at how changing food prices affect child undernutrition in Ethiopia. It derives height for age (stunting) and weight for height (wasting) as indicators of child undernutrition from the two most recent years of the Livings Standards Measurement Survey and utilizes market prices...

This paper revisits the economic consequences of land fragmentation, taking seriously concerns regarding the exogeneity of fragmentation, its measurement and the importance of considering impacts in terms of welfare metrics. Using data that are well-suited to addressing these issues, the...

Economists often default to the assumption that cash is always preferable to an in-kind transfer. Do beneficiaries feel the same way? This paper addresses this issue using longitudinal household data from Ethiopia where a large-scale social safety net intervention (PSNP) operates. Even though...

In the past 10 years, Ethiopia experienced high and consistent growth, invested in public goods provision to poor households, and saw impressive gains in well-being for many households. This paper exploits variation in sectoral growth and public goods provision across zones and time, to examine...

This paper examines the welfare impact of hosting refugees in Ethiopia, one of the largest refugee-hosting countries worldwide. Identification comes from a large spatial difference in within-village temporal changes in refugee intensity, following a recent upsurge in the flow of refugees into...

Solar lanterns are a relatively inexpensive renewable-energy option for household lighting in developing countries. However, the transition to these lighting sources is slow. To understand why, this study uses the Becker-Degroot-Marschak bidding mechanism in a randomized field experiment to...

Ethiopia has achieved sustained high growth for more than a decade. At the same time, the country has been facing several economic challenges, including falling exports, chronic foreign currency shortages, as well as a slow pace of structural transformation. In recent years, the already...

This paper explores the impact of large, individual-liability loans on the growth of women-owned microenterprises in Ethiopia. Traditionally, microfinance institutions in Ethiopia have primarily catered to female enterprises with group lending schemes that provide very small loans. The...