Surveys of the operation of agricultural traders in two Sub-Saharan African countries suggest that their performance would benefit from policies aimed at increasing their asset base, reducing transaction risk, promoting more sophisticated business practices, and reducing physical marketing costs

The Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan (ADBP), which provides most formal loans in Pakistan's rural areas, lends to largeholders far more than to smallholders, although the impact of credit is greater for the smallholders. Targeting credit to smallholders would make ADBP's credit scheme...

Interventions in sugar markets come about for many reasons. Often the consequences of these policies persist even when the circumstances that motivated them change. Or the underlying problems that motivated past interventions remain even when it's clear that current approaches have failed....

Almost 90 percent of Moroccan agriculture is not irrigated, and since most of Morocco's crops depend on adequate rainfall, yields and production vary widely. A drought insurance program based on rainfall index contracts is feasible in parts of Morocco and could significantly benefit its farmers

Results from this study of the extent and implications of attrition for three longitudinal household surveys from Bolivia, Kenya, and South Africa suggest that multivariate estimates of behavioral relations may not be biased because of high attrition. This suggests that demographers and other...