Despite large amounts invested in rural roads in developing countries, little is known about their benefits. This paper derives an expression for the willingness-to-pay for a reduction in transport costs from the canonical agricultural household model and uses it to estimate the benefits of a...

In a setting where husbands wield considerable coercive power, forms of marriage should adapt to protect the interests of women and their families. The authors study the pervasive marriage custom of watta satta in rural Pakistan, a bride exchange between families coupled with a mutual threat of...

Although sharecropping has long fascinated economists, the determinants of this contractual form are still poorly understood and the debate over the extent of moral hazard is far from settled. The authors address both issues by emphasizing the role of landlord supervision. When tenant effort is...

Monsoon rainfall is a key driver of economic life in rural Nepal as well as a major source of income variability. In this paper, the authors use a newly collected 3-year panel data set, representative of rural Nepal, merged with global monthly precipitation data to investigate the nature of the...

Biofortification is a rapidly emerging strategy to address micronutrient malnutrition, but as an agricultural strategy with health objectives, it faces unique challenges. This article identifies three challenges to agricultural technology adoption that biofortification must meet to become a...

The main driver of poverty reduction has shifted from agricultural to non-agricultural income growth in rural Philippines in the past two decades. Agricultural growth is still relatively more important (vis-à-vis non-agricultural growth), however, in reducing rural poverty in relatively more...