The effective design and implementation of interventions that reduce vulnerability and poverty require a solid understanding of underlying poverty dynamics and associated behavioral responses. Stochastic and dynamic benefit streams can make it difficult for the poor to learn the value of such...

The maize green revolution, which increased maize yields through the use of improved varieties and fertilizer, has stalled since the mid-eighties in Kenya. This paper examines whether the stagnation of yields continued in the 1990s in spite of the implementation of the maize liberalization...

New information communication technology is a good opportunity to exchange information and to get feedback from customers shortening the traditional channel of social relationships. In different countries over the time there has been a significant growth of social interactions by social networks...

A central theme of international trade research has been the impact of trade liberalization on productivity. Early literature on this theme points out that trade liberalization brings resource/organizational adjustment across industries and this adjustment enhances productivity. A traditional...

Using a unique dataset of maize samples and consumer interviews form Eastern Kenya, we find that the presence of the fungal contaminant aflatoxin is negatively associated with the use of maize flour for food. While food remains the most common use of maize regardless of the presence of the...

We assess the relative impacts of receiving cash versus food transfers using a randomized design. Drawing on data collected in eastern Niger, we find that households randomized to receive a food basket experienced larger, positive impact on measures of food consumption and diet quality than...

Pro-poor growth has been identified as one of the most promising pathways to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or any subsequent set of goals aiming to reduce poverty worldwide. Related research has developed a multitude of instruments to measure pro-poor growth using absolute and...

If relative prices of goods within a commodity group are constant, Hicksian separability lets the price of a single good represent the group price level. This is relied on by designers of price questionnaires used in household surveys and by methods of estimating demand systems from household...

Food processing has been widely recognized as a traditional, unskilled-labor intensive production. Yet rapid development in technology drives food processing into more sophisticated and technology-oriented industry. This paper utilizes a fixed effects model to test the hypothesis that the food...