Summary Like many other African countries in the early 1990s, Burkina Faso was urged to engage in a far-reaching liberalization of its state-led cotton sector. Instead it engaged in more gradual and sequenced reforms characterized by institutional innovations and partial privatization. But while...

As countries develop, they restructure away from agriculture and urbanize. But structural transformation and urbanization patterns differ substantially, with some countries fostering migration out of agriculture into rural off farm activities and secondary towns, and others undergoing rapid...

Through decentralized targeting of input vouchers new agricultural input subsidy programs aim to more effectively reach their objectives and target population. But, lingering fears of elite capture remain. These are borne out in the 2009 input voucher program in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Sixty...

Despite the tremendous human suffering caused by natural disasters, their effects on economic growth remain unclear, with some studies reporting negative, and others indicating no or even positive effects. To reconcile these seemingly contradictory findings reported in the literature, this study...