Agricultural production can degrade water sources through leaching of nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural land to surface and ground water sources. To minimize the pollution from agricultural production, the U.S. Department of Agriculture promotes adoption of conservation practices....

Satellite-detected luminosity is sometimes used to proxy for economic activity although only recently within the mainstream economics literature (Henderson et al., 2012). If this method works it holds great promise for developing countries with weak statistical systems that face difficulties in...

Pro-poor growth has been identified as one of the most promising pathways to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or any subsequent set of goals aiming to reduce poverty worldwide. Related research has developed a multitude of instruments to measure pro-poor growth using absolute and...

In this paper, we generalize the rational addiction model to include three addictive goods: cigarettes, alcohol and coffee. We use a pseudo-panel data approach which has many advantages compared to aggregate and panel data. While cigarette and coffee demands fit well with the rational addiction...

The benefits of undergraduate research for students, including gains in analytical and critical thinking skills, written communication, and self-assurance, has been well-documented in the natural sciences. However, few studies exist that assess the benefits of undergraduate research in the...

When natural disasters strike in developing countries, households are often forced to choose between preserving assets or consumption: either can result in permanent consequences. In this paper we ask: can insurance transfer risk in a way that reduces the need for households to rely on costly...

Due to the increased share of food consumption away from (FAFH) on overall household food expenditure, a considerable body of literature has examined the impacts of FAFH on diet quality and physical health. A conventional wisdom is that FAFH is associated with poor diet quality, and it also...

The Global Food Price Crisis of 2007-2011 had mixed effects on the poor in developing nations. By some estimates, the Crisis lifted nearly 24 million poor farmers out of poverty; however, it also cast 68 million net food buyers into poverty. In this paper, we analyze the distributional impacts...

Is the relationship between energy and agricultural commodities an important factor in the increasing price variability of food commodities? Findings from the literature appear to be mixed and highly influenced by the data frequency used in those analysis. A recurrent task in time series applied...