While there is a fast-growing policy interest in offering financial products to help rural households manage risk, the literature is still scant as to which products are the most effective. In order to inform gender targeting of rural finance policy, this paper investigates which financial...

The evidence of improved performance of agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) in recent years has indeed been quite striking when compared with the past. For the first time, the sector has maintained a real growth rate of 3.4 percent per year, well above the population growth rate of...

This study assesses the patterns of agricultural intensification in 40 African countries looking at the role fertilizer plays in the process. We propose a set of indicators that uses information on available agricultural land and land suitability to measure intensity of land use in agricultural...

A large body of literature suggests that consumers derive utility from gains and losses relative to a reference point. This paper shows that such reference dependence can affect savings in opposite directions depending on whether people face liquidity constraints. Existing models for wealth and...

Interventions aimed at increasing water availability for livelihood and domestic activities have great potential to improve various determinants of undernutrition, such as the quantity and diversity of foods consumed within the household, income generation, and women’s empowerment....

Ownership of assets is important for poverty alleviation, and women’s control of assets is associated with positive development outcomes at the household and individual levels. This research was undertaken to provide guidance for agricultural development programs on how to incorporate...

Weather-related production risks remain one of the most serious constraints to agricultural production in much of the developing world. Financial and technological innovations that mitigate these risks have the potential to greatly benefit farmers in areas prone to such risks. In this study we...

This research was undertaken to understand gender issues on the distribution of, access to, and control over major assets of rice-farming households as well as the effects of technologies promoted by an Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) project in selected villages in eastern Uttar...

This research paper is aimed at understanding why border trade policies are today complemented with behind-the-border policies like output subsidies, R&D subsidies, and public R&D investments. This is a new type of protectionism that becomes prominent since the 2006-2008 economic crisis. In this...

In order to distinguish the impacts of technology adoption at the extensive margin from those at the intensive margin, in the empirical analyses we tested these hypotheses focusing on the differences among marginal adopters of tractor hiring services and nonadopters of similar characteristics....