Using OECD-DAC data covering 112 recipient countries for 1995–2011, this paper examines the responsiveness of health aid to the recipients’ needs in terms of infant mortality, child mortality, and HIV prevalence. This paper fills a gap in the literature by investigating extensive and...

While financial inclusion is typically addressed by improving the financial infrastructure, we show that a higher degree of financial literacy also has a clear beneficial effect. We study this effect at the cross-country level, which allows us to consider institutional variation. Regarding...

We examine how women’s bargaining power affects child nutritional status using data from rural Senegal. In order to correct for the potential endogeneity of women’s bargaining power we use information on a mother’s ethnicity relative to that of the community she resides in order to...

We estimate the causal effect of food standards on Vietnamese pangasius farmers’ wellbeing measured by per capita consumption expenditure. We estimate both the average effects and the local average treatment effects on poorer and richer farmers by instrumental variable quantile regression. Our...

It is widely agreed that smallholder-led agricultural growth would contribute most to improved food security and reduced poverty. Yet, how to achieve broader and more sustainable access by smallholder farmers to productivity-enhancing inputs for food crop production remains a largely unsolved...

Empirical evidence from comparative studies on the impact of structural adjustment on Sub-Saharan African agricultural performance remains largely inconclusive. To illuminate this debate, we estimate the impact of liberalization on productivity, acreage, and production while controlling for...

Summary If labor markets operate with only minor frictions, productivity premiums associated with worker characteristics should equal the corresponding wage premiums. We evaluate this for labor market experience, schooling, job tenure, and training using matched employer-employee data from the...

We used baseline data, collected in July–September 2009, from a randomized controlled trial of a cash transfer program for vulnerable children in eastern Zimbabwe to investigate the effectiveness, coverage, and efficiency of census- and community-based targeting methods for reaching vulnerable...

Small-scale assemblers are both the most vilified and least understood actors in food value chains in Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on data from Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, this article explores how maize assemblers influence the market access conditions of small-scale farmers. Assembly...

This paper examines whether shareholder-owned MFIs financially and socially perform better than NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We also investigate the role of institutional quality in altering MFIs’ incentives and behavior in determining outreach. Our results indicate that NGOs are more...