The paper presents empirical analysis of a panel of countries to estimate an agricultural production function using a measure of capital in agriculture absent from most studies. The authors employ a heterogeneous technology framework where implemented technology is chosen jointly with inputs to...

Much has been written on the determinants of input and technology adoption in agriculture, with issues such as input availability, knowledge and education, risk preferences, profitability, and credit constraints receiving much attention. This paper focuses on a factor that has been less well...

The adoption of new agricultural technologies may be discouraged because of their inherent riskiness. This study implemented a randomized field experiment to ask whether the provision of insurance against a major source of production risk induces farmers to take out loans to invest in a new crop...

This paper addresses an old and recurring theme in development economics: the slow adoption of new technologies by farmers in many developing countries. The paper explores a somewhat novel link to explain this puzzle -- the link between market access and the incentives to adopt a new technology...

The global financial crisis and its aftermath have triggered extraordinary policy responses in advanced countries. The impacts of these policy responses—from asset price bubbles to currency depreciations—have often been felt in the developing world. As tapering talk evolves into actual...

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, interest in systemic risk has surged among academics and policy makers. The mitigation of systemic risk is now widely accepted as the fundamental underlying concept for the design of the post-crisis regulatory agenda. Effective mitigation requires...

This study uses a computable general equilibrium model to analyze various policy scenarios for a carbon tax on greenhouse gas emissions from petroleum fuels and kerosene in Ethiopia. The carbon tax starts at $5 per ton of carbon dioxide in 2018 and rises to $30 per ton in 2030. Different...

Using a new, large data set on quarterly reserve requirements for the period 1970-2011, this paper provides new evidence on the use of reserve requirements as a countercyclical macroprudential tool in developing countries. The appeal of reserve requirements lies in the pro-cyclical behavior of...

This paper investigates corruption and tax evasion and their firm-level determinants across 25,000 firms in 57 countries, a large fraction of which are small and medium enterprises in developing countries. Firms that pay more bribes also evade more taxes. Corruption acts as a tax on innovation,...

This paper provides evidence from eight developing countries of an inverse relationship between poverty and city size. Poverty is both more widespread and deeper in very small and small towns than in large or very large cities. This basic pattern is generally robust to choice of poverty line....