Improving quality is an important element of the transfer of production to low wage countries. Higher quality requirements are part of complex contracting arrangements in global supply chains. This paper analyzes how weak contract enforcement institutions and imperfect factor markets are...

This study explores the link between proximity and price cointegration between two markets, where proximity is captured with variables for geographical, political and cultural distance. Linear and threshold cointegration is tested for a set of 756 rice market pairs in 6 West African countries,...

Several recent studies have shown that not only exporters but also importers perform better than firms that do not trade. Using a detailed firm level dataset from 43 developing countries, I show that there are persistent differences in evolution of firms when they are grouped according to their...

Investments in agricultural modernization have resulted in remarkable progress in food production over the last century. As a consequence, the global number and the proportion of undernourished people has fallen significantly. Despite this progress, providing sufficient and nutritiously diverse...

In many low-income countries, agriculture is mostly rainfed and yields highly depend on climatic factors. Furthermore, farmers have little access to traditional crop insurance, which suffers from high information asymmetry and transaction costs. Insurances based on meteorological indices could...

Our analysis of a rich representative household survey for Malawi, where patrilineal and matrilineal institutions coexist, suggests that (a) in matrilineal societies the likelihood of high value crop cultivation by a household increases with the extent of land owned by males, while the income...

This paper evaluates causal impacts of a large-scale agricultural extension program for smallholder women farmers on food security in Uganda through a regression discontinuity design that exploits an arbitrary distance-to-branch threshold for village program eligibility. We find eligible farmers...

Small farms are the largest employment and small business group among the poor. Their businesses use mostly labor and local resources and face local constraints, but at the same time, they are affected by increasingly complex national and global economic changes, which lead to shifts in...

The transformation of the global agrifood system is characterized by the increasing importance of food safety and quality standards. This trend is challenging farmers in countries like Guatemala as they lack necessary skills and assets. This study analyzes the determinants of Globalgap adoption...

This paper addresses various aspects of risk and risk management for smallholders in developing countries, and presents a quantitative assessment of farm-level risks and risk management strategies in three emerging economies: Brazil, China and Viet Nam. The analysis covers production, income,...