This paper argues for a twin-track approach to hunger and poverty reduction that combines measures to promote rural development through growth in agriculture and rural off-farm activities with measures to provide direct and immediate access to food for the most needy. The paper begins with an...

We review claims about the potential for carbon markets that link both payments for carbon services and poverty levels to ongoing rates of tropical deforestation. We then examine these effects empirically for Costa Rica during the 20th century using an econometric approach that addresses the...

The majority of biotech research and almost all of the commercialization of genetically engineered crops has been done by private firms based in industrialized countries. The dominance of the private sector in biotechnology research and product development has raised concern in developing...

Global adoption of transgenic crops reached 67.7 million hectares in 2003 from 2.8 million in 1996. Delivery has occurred almost entirely through the private sector and adoption has been rapid in areas where the crops addressed serious production constraints and where farmers had access to the...

Liberalization of Egyptian agricultural policy and new wheat technology has led to significant increases in area allocated to wheat as well as wheat yields. The wheat self-sufficiency ratio increased from 21 percent in 1986 to about 59 percent over the 2001-03 period. However, the country still...

In this paper we examine the effects of the composition (between private and public goods) of government expenditures in the rural world, and the effect that corruption has in the political game that determines these allocation decisions. In the first section of this paper we develop a political...

This paper uses a duration analysis based on adoption data spanning over 25 years from six communities in the Central Highlands of Guatemala to explore how household characteristics and external trends play into both the adoption and diffusion processes of non-traditional exports among...

This paper explores a territorial approach to rural development in Latin America. It first reviews evidence that progress in rural social development has not been accompanied by reductions in income poverty and inequality. It then assesses qualitative changes that have occurred in rural incomes...

The paper summarizes the key routes through which internal and international migration impact rural development and some of the evidence pertaining to these effects in low income countries. It concludes that, although the study of migration impacts on rural economies has come a long way from the...

Quantitative models for climate policy modeling differ in the production structure used and in the sizes of the elasticities of substitution. The empirical foundation for both is generally lacking. This paper estimates the parameters of two-level CES production functions with capital, labour and...