This paper applies the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) framework on data obtained from a random cross-section sample of 594 farmers in Malawi to document the actual and potential adoption rates of improved groundnut varieties and their determinants conditional on farmers’ awareness of the...

This study tests the null hypothesis that it is sufficient to interview only the household head to obtain accurate information on household income. Results show that using a husband’s estimate of his wife’s income does not produce statistically reliable results for poverty analysis....

The government of Malawi in 2004 initiated an ICT-based Malawi Agricultural Commodity Exchange (MACE), a market information service project, to improve access by farmers to market information. MACE was intended to improve the efficiency of agricultural markets as part of the strategy to improve...

We investigate measurement of market integration of staple food markets in developing countries. The analysis takes the Parity Bound Model as starting point and modifies this model by parameterizing and estimating transaction costs. The specification of transaction costs takes account of...

The paper analyses the factors that affect smallholder farmers choice of soil fertility management options in Malawi using a two-stage maximum likelihood estimation procedure. Using results from the Double-Hurdle model, the paper estimates the probabilities and intensities of fertilizer...

We assess the level and determinants of relative technical efficiency of maize-based smallholder farmers using a translog stochastic frontier (TL) model and a symmetric generalized Barnett production function (SGB), both of which are tested for economic regularity conditions. In addition, we...

Guided by the frame work of a household model under credit market failure, this paper aims at investigating the impact of access to credit on the adoption of hybrid maize among households that vary in their credit constraints. The data used in the study is from Malawi collected by the...

This paper assesses factors governing farmers’ decision to adopt adaptation/risk-mitigating strategies and evaluates the impact of adoption on crop productivity by utilizing household level data collected in 2011 from a nationally representative sample of 7842 households (11208 plots) in...

Developing countries have been promoting initiatives that aim at reducing information asymmetry among market players especially smallholder farmers. Using co-integration error correction models, the study assessed effectiveness of modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) based...