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...

There is widespread consensus that agricultural technology has an important role to play for poverty reduction and sustainable development. There is less consensus, however, about the types of technologies that are best suited for smallholder farmers in Africa. While some consider natural...

The agricultural sector in developing countries like Nigeria is characterized by low productivity, driven partly by low use of modern agricultural technologies. Poor access to credit is seen as a key barrier to adoption of these technologies. Policy discourses and literature often associate...

Innovation is one of the most important drivers of economic development. Even in developing countries, households have access to a wide array of new technologies. However, factors affecting households' technology adoption decisions remain poorly understood. Using data on solar microgrid adoption...

This paper analyzes the short- and long-term impact of extreme weather events on educational outcomes in Mongolia. Our focus is on two extremely severe winters that caused mass livestock mortality. We use household panel data with comprehensive retrospective information on households’ historic...

While the importance of diet quality for improving child health is widely recognized, the roles of environmental factors and absorption of nutrients for children's physical growth and morbidity have not been adequately integrated into a policy framework. Moreover, nutrient intakes gradually...

Many adolescent girls in low-income countries face the challenge of early pregnancy and lifelong dependence upon family and partners. In this paper, we review the literature on field interventions aimed at reducing early pregnancies in low-income countries and report from a randomized control...

Poor people are trapped in a vicious cycle of intergenerational poverty. This study critically reviews existing literature to explore why long-lasting poverty exists despite various initiatives taken by national and international development organizations (NGOs), charity organizations, and...

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...

The investment decisions of small-scale farmers in developing countries are conditioned by their financial environment. Binding credit market constraints and incomplete insurance can reduce investment in activities with high expected profits. We conducted several experiments in northern Ghana in...