The dissertation examines an informal financial institution in Cameroon: the Rotating Saving and Credit Association. Its describes the operational procedures. RoSCAs are associations formed by a core of individuals who willingly and regularly contribute periodically a fixed or variable amount to...

Significant ambiguity surrounds the magnitude and sign of the effect of foreign aid on economic growth. Foreign aid can potentially augment scarce domestic capital to spur growth but foreign aid can also remove positive incentive to build wealth, stalling growth. This paper characterizes the...

This paper investigates the impact of USDA crop production reports in corn andsoybean futures markets. The analysis is based on all corn and soybean production reportsreleased over 1970-2006. The empirical analysis compares the typical OLS eventstudy approach to the new Identification by...

This paper addresses the collective action problem of nonpoint-source pollution control in a small agricultural watershed. At issue is the stability of cooperative behavior among a group of farmers, who have voluntarily agreed to discontinue their use of the herbicide atrazine due to high...

In spite of widespread adoption there is mixed evidence as to whether or not adopting Genetically Modified (GM) crops increase farm welfare. One possible reason for widespread adoption is labor savings. Using a treatment effect model we estimate the labor savings associated with adopting a GM crop.

Significant ambiguity surrounds the magnitude and sign of the effect of foreign aid on economic growth. Foreign aid can potentially augment scarce domestic capital to spur growth but foreign aid can also remove positive incentive to build wealth, stalling growth. This paper characterizes the...

Efforts to distribute land titles to low-income rural Afro-Brazilian communities, known as quilombos, have been disappointing despite the provision of ample government resources. Until now, research on the implications of Brazil s land reform policies has not considered quilombo communities in...

Recent food price increases reportedly caused significant numbers of households to fall into poverty, particularly in the developing world. Most research into the welfare effects of these food price changes assumes constant demand or approximates second order substitution effects. Poverty...

Agricultural commercialization, or the transition from food to cash crops, has gained increasing attention over the past few decades. Plans for developing world farmers to focus on labor-intensive cash crops, to exploit their natural comparative advantage, typically depend on stable food markets...