Microcredit has expanded rapidly since its beginnings in the last 1970s, but whether and how much it reduces poverty is the subject of intense debate. Generally it depends on how the program is implemented and the set of policies that regulate it. In this spirit, microcredit impacts in the...

In most developing countries, historically, the main strategy for improving the food sector has focused on increasing farm-level production. But in recent years, with the emphasis on value chain analysis, there has been much more focus on subsector studies, demand-driven approaches, and...

This paper is based on an ongoing joint work with David Sahn and Xiaobo Zhang.

Coffee consumption in China is increasing rapidly over the recent years. This study offers one of the few initial attempts to not only understand general consumption behavior associated with Chinese coffee, but to explore the viability of niche markets for coffee with the credence attribute...

This report sets out some broad ideas about how poverty evaluation could be conducted for ACIAR research projects. As with good benefit–cost analysis, there are good practices that need to be observed when undertaking poverty analysis. While poverty is a broad concept, and can be addressed...

This paper takes a local perspective on global food price shocks by analyzing food price transmission between regional markets in Ghana. It also assesses the impacts of food price increases on various household groups. Taking the recent global food crisis as an example, we find that prices for...

The civil war in Côte d’Ivoire has caused an increase in household size due to returnees and a decrease in remittance received in rural Burkina Faso. This paper, taking advantage of a rare dataset covering the covariate shocks caused by the Ivorian Crisis, examines empirically the impact of...

There is a widely held view that off-farm income in developing countries tends to reduce poverty, leading to the conclusion that policies should focus on the further diversification of income options of rural households. However, much off-farm employment might be initiated rather as a survival...

This paper explores the impact of the recent soar in world commodity prices on economic activity and household welfare in Tanzania, and the possible policy responses to that shock. The analysis is based on a single country computable general equilibrium model that includes considerable factor...

Prepared for the COMESA policy seminar on“Variation in staple food prices: Causes, consequence, and policy options”,Maputo, Mozambique, 25-26 January 2010under the Comesa-MSU-IFPRI African Agricultural Marketing Project (AAMP)