Agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) lags far behind all other regions of the world. A long list of policy experiments has yielded more evidence on what fails than on what works. We analyze a randomized control trial of a rare scaled-up success story: One Acre Fund's small...

This paper documents the fundamental role played by factor accumulation in explaining the extraordinary postwar growth of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Participation rates, educational levels and (with the exception of Hong Kong) investment rates have risen rapidly in all four...

This paper specifies and estimates a four-equation disequilibrium model of the consumption goods market in a centrally planned economy(CPE).The data are from Poland for the period 1955-1980, but the analysis is more general and will be applied to other CPEs as soon as the appropriate data sets...

This paper examines a model in which demand is uncertain and production must occur before demand is known for sure. By investing resources in information gathering activity, demand can be forecast. The paper investigates the relationship between the incentive to plan and market structure and...

The investment decisions of small‐scale farmers in developing countries are conditioned by their financial environment. Binding credit market constraints and incomplete insurance can reduce investment in activities with high expected profits. We conducted several experiments in northern Ghana...

In discussing the paradoxical violation of expected utility theory that now bears his name, Maurice Allais noted that individuals tend to “greatly value” payoffs that are certain. Allais' observation would seem to imply that people will undervalue insurance relative to the predictions of...

In this paper we show that the study of the farm size-productivity relationship hinges on the choice of productivity measure. Our main insight is that using yields, a partial measure of productivity, may not be informative for the size-productivity relationship because, in addition to total...

We examine whether returns to capital are higher for farmers who borrow than for those who do not, a direct implication of many credit market models. We measure the difference in returns through a two-stage loan and grant experiment. We find large positive investment responses and returns to...

Recent evaluations of traditional microfinance loans have found no significant impacts on borrower incomes or productive activities. We examine whether this can be remedied by (a) modifying loan features to facilitate financing of working capital needs of farmers, and (b) delegating selection of...

Many rural households in low and middle income countries continue to rely on small-scale agriculture as their primary source of income. In the absence of irrigation, income arrives only once or twice per year, and has to cover consumption and input needs until the subsequent harvest. We develop...