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...

Livestock are an important component of rural livelihoods in developing countries, but data about this source of income and wealth are difficult to collect because of the nomadic and semi-nomadic nature of many pastoralist populations. Most household surveys exclude those without permanent...

In Africa, farmers have been reluctant to take up new varieties of staple crops developed to boost smallholder yields and rural incomes. Low fertilizer use is often mentioned as a proximate cause, but some believe the problem originates with incomplete input markets. As a remedy, African...

This paper evaluates the impact of strengthening legal rights on the types of economic opportunities that are pursued. Ethiopia changed its family law, requiring both spouses' consent in the administration of marital property, removing the ability of a spouse to deny permission for the other to...

This paper investigates whether the Ethiopian economy is undergoing a virtuous process of structural change. In particular, it assesses the relative contributions of within-sector and between-sector productivity to output per capita growth. Based on data disaggregated into eight sectors for the...