Previous Ricardian analyses of agriculture have either omitted irrigation or treated irrigation as though it is exogenous. In practice, it is a choice by farmers that is sensitive to climate. This paper develops a choice model of irrigation in the context of a Ricardian model of cropland. The...

This paper examines whether the choice of crops is affected by climate in Africa. Using a multinomial logit model, the paper regresses crop choice on climate, soils, and other factors. The model is estimated using a sample of more than 7,000 farmers across 11 countries in Africa. The study finds...

The objective of this paper is to determine the ability of farmers in Africa to detect climate change, and to ascertain how they have adapted to whatever climate change they believe has occurred. The paper also asks farmers whether they perceive any barriers to adaptation and attempts to...

There is a general consensus that most of the poor in developing countries are net food buyers and food price increases are bad for the poor. This could be expected of urban poor, but it is also often attributed to the rural poor. Recent food price increases have increased the importance of this...

Food purchased and consumed away from home is a growing share of household expenditure in developing countries. Therefore, measuring the monetary value and estimating the caloric equivalent of these meals are increasingly important for the accurate calculation of a cost-of-basic-needs poverty...

Three recent rounds (2003, 2006, and 2009) of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey are matched to rainfall data from 43 rainfall stations in the Philippines to quantify the extent to which unusual weather has any negative effects on the consumption of Filipino households. It is found that...

Women comprise 50 percent of the agricultural labor force in Sub-Saharan Africa, but manage plots that are reportedly on average 20 to 30 percent less productive. As a source of income inequality and aggregate productivity loss, the country-specific magnitude and drivers of this gender gap are...

Australia's lackluster economic growth performance in the first four decades following World War II was in part due to an anti-trade, anti-primary sector bias in government assistance policies. This paper provides new annual estimates of the extent of those biases since 1946 and their gradual...

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...

Several studies addressing the supply and demand for food in China suggest that the nation can largely meet its needs in the coming decades. However, these studies do not consider the effects of climate change. This paper examines whether near future expected changes in climate are likely to...