The effective design and implementation of interventions that reduce vulnerability and poverty require a solid understanding of underlying poverty dynamics and associated behavioral responses. Stochastic and dynamic benefit streams can make it difficult for the poor to learn the value of such...

This paper introduces a special issue featuring a set of papers on institutional arrangements for reconciling rural poverty reduction with renewable natural resources conservation in the low-income tropics. Collectively, these papers make four core points. First, synergies do not naturally...

Considerable agreement exists among researchers, development practitioners, and policymakers regarding the goals of sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI). They include: achieving agricultural productivity growth, household food security, and improved rural livelihoods and employment,...

Temporal climate risk weighs heavily on many of the world’s poor. Model-based climate forecasts could benefit such populations, provided recipients use forecast information to update climate expectations. We test whether pastoralists in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya update their...

This study investigates development priorities of individuals living in 11 communities in the arid and semi-arid rangelands of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. We first asked individuals to describe development efforts that have been implemented in their community. People were then asked to...

Mitigating the negative welfare consequences of crises such as droughts, floods, and disease outbreaks, is a major challenge in many areas of the world, especially in highly vulnerable areas insufficiently equipped to prevent food and livelihood security crisis in the face of adverse shocks....

We model interhousehold transfers between nomadic livestock herders as the state-dependent consequence of individuals' strategic interdependence resulting from the existence of multiple, opposing externalities. A public good security externality among individuals sharing a social (e.g., ethnic)...

This study investigates perspectives on development held by individuals living in arid and semi-arid areas of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. Overall, we find that interventions to meet basic human needs (access to water, health care and education) are the most highly desired. Projects...

In the pastoral and agropastoral systems of east Africa's arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL), climatic shocks, price volatility, disease outbreaks, and widespread violence beget frequent, severe disruption of already-fragile livelihoods. The past year's drought dramatically demonstrates that...

We model interhousehold transfers between nomadic livestock herders as the state-dependent consequence of individuals' strategic interdependence resulting from the existence of multiple, opposing externalities. A public good security externality among individuals sharing a social (e.g., ethnic)...