Can private-sector participation (PSP) in the urban piped water sector improve child health? The author uses child-level data from 39 African countries during 1986–2010 to show that introducing PSP decreases diarrhea among urban dwelling children under five years of age by 5.6 percentage...

The level of public spending on agriculture in Nigeria remains low regardless of the indicator used. Agricultural spending as a share of total federal spending averaged 4.6 percent between 2008 and 2012 and has been trending downward precipitously. In contrast, Nigeria recorded an annual average...

This paper contributes to our understanding of food policy–research partnerships and provides a review of the theory and empirical literature about the factors that contribute to effective food policy–research partnerships. The literature points to the emergence of organizational...

We use firm-level data from the World Bank’s Regional Program on Enterprise Development, covering Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania for 1991–2003. Econometric results confirm well-known relationships, such as a positive association between export intensity and TFP, which implies...

This paper assesses the sustainability of the current supply network for mechanization, given government policy. Stylized models of mechanization supply are developed based on experience in Bangladesh, China, and India during similar stages of agricultural transformation. Ghana’s supply...

This study demonstrates why devaluation was ultimately necessary in Malawi and also what its eventual impact might be in terms of prices, income distribution, and domestic production. Our approach is to use a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to evaluate the economywide impacts of...

This research was undertaken to understand how information about a new agricultural technology is transmitted through social networks, and what effect information gained through social networks has on technology demand at the household level. The technology in question is laser land leveling...

The extent to which Bangladesh should rely on imports for rice price stabilization is a contentious policy issue. This issue was underscored in the wake of the 2007–08 world food crisis, during which international rice prices skyrocketed and rice import supplies from India were disrupted....

There is growing interest in the role of policy reforms to promote gender equality and empower women, two key objectives of development policy. From a policy perspective, it would be ideal for reforms undertaken in different policy areas to be consistent, so that they reinforce each other in...