Insufficient access to assets is the main determinant of poverty. We analyze the role of access to assets in explaining household labor allocation strategies, sources of income, levels of income achieved, and poverty headcount ratios among classes of Mexican rural households. To assess the gains...

Farmers incur proportional and fixed transactions costs in selling their crops on markets. Using data for Peruvian potato farmers, we propose a method to measure these transactions costs. When opportunities exist to sell a crop on alternative markets, the observed choice of market can be used to...

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs have become extensively used to induce poor parents to increase their investments in the human capital of their children. The condition on school attendance and use of health facilities transforms the transfer into a price effect on the condition....

The financial surplus of agriculture has been central to theories of the role of agriculture in economic development. Morrisson and Thorbecke (MT) have used a constant-price social accounting matrix (SAM) framework to rigorously measure the financial surplus of agriculture and decompose the...

In this paper we consider different strategies for implementing a payment for environmental services (PES) program to mitigate deforestation in Mexican common property forests (ejidos). We begin by discussing the policy context within which PES programs find themselves, highlighting other...