The NERICA (New Rice for Africa) rice varieties, developed by the Africa Rice Center during the 1990s, are providing hopes for raising the productivity of upland rice farmers in Africa because of their reported high yield potential and adaptability to the African conditions. The varieties are...

Previous studies emphasize that shocks can cause households to fall into poverty traps and to remain there because of risk aversion, yet to date there has been no attempt to discern whether shocks increase risk aversion over time in a developing country. We examine whether shocks increase risk...

Accurate targeting is key for the success of any development policy. While a number of factors might explain low targeting efficiency such as governance failure, political interference or lack of political will, this paper focuses on improving indicator-based models that identify poor households...

Eradicating poverty is one of the most urgent concerns of development policies. Organisations aiming at reducing poverty need simple and stable tools to detect poor households. Using data from Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, this study aims to test first whether two indicators sets for poverty...

The achievement of food security for all remains one of the main development objectives worldwide. Most commonly, non-spatial models are developed for either explaining the underlying determinants of food insecurity and undernourishment or for predicting their changes, so as for identifying...

This study aims to test 1. whether two indicator-based tools for poverty assessment in rural Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, developed in 2005 are capable of predicting absolute poverty in 2007, and 2. whether the indicator composition of these poverty assessment tools remains robust over time. In...

The recent international financial crisis and the steady decrease in development assistance have put many poor countries under increasing pressure to target more accurately their public spendings at the poor and the population in need. However, further progress is hampered by the lack of...

This paper develops low cost, reasonably accurate, and simple models for improving the targeting efficiency of development policies in Malawi. Using a stepwise logistic regression (weighted) along with other techniques applied in credit scoring, the research identifies a set of easily observable...

Ethiopia's agriculture is predominantly rainfed and hence any irregularity in weather conditions has adverse welfare implications. Using panel data, this paper analyzes the effect of rainfall shocks on Ethiopian rural households' food security and vulnerability over time while controlling for a...

This paper assesses the cost efficiency of indicator-based targeting. Using household survey data from Malawi, we examine whether an indicator-based targeting of the poor is more target- and cost-efficient than the currently used mechanisms for targeting agricultural subsidy programs in the...