By paying particular attention to the local economic context, this paper analyzes rural non-agricultural employment and earnings in non-agricultural jobs. The empirical analysis is based on the Brazilian Demographic Census, allowing for disaggregated controls for the local economy. Education...

This study examines the relationship between agricultural technology adoption and poverty with a focus on New Rice varieties for Africa (NERICA). The NERICAs are a group of rice varieties developed by the Africa Rice Centre during the 1990s, resulting from the inter-specific crosses between the...

Agricultural productivity growth is widely seen as an essential instrument of poverty reduction, food security and broader economic growth. Paradoxically, however, the agricultural sector is often neglected by African governments in what is often termed ‘urban bias’. This paper explores what...

This paper evaluates the long-term impact of microfinance credit from the intensity of participation in borrowing. We use a four-round panel data set on 351 farm households that had access to microfinance in northern Ethiopia. Over the years 1997-2006, with three-year intervals, households are...

Despite recent improvements in economic performance, undernutrition rates in Africa appear to have improved much less and rather inconsistently across the continent. We examine to what extent there is an empirical linkage between income growth and reductions of child undernutrition in Africa. We...

The role of migration in reducing poverty in developing countries has been investigated mainly from the perspective of migrants and their relatives. This paper exploits the time and spatial variations in the way households in the region of Kagera (Tanzania) traced between 1991 and 2004 have been...

Agricultural commercialization, or the transition from food to cash crops, has gained increasing attention over the past few decades. Plans for developing world farmers to focus on labor-intensive cash crops, to exploit their natural comparative advantage, typically depend on stable food markets...

This paper evaluates the potential of Jatropha curcas Linnaeus (Jatropha) as an alternative source of energy for rural households. The plant is said to have potential to diversify rural incomes, reclaim unproductive lands, reduce importation of fossil fuels, and consequently accumulation of...

In the context of increasing competition for water, knowledge of the marginal productivity of water is crucial in determining its optimal allocation between users. Using primary, plot level panel data, this paper estimates the marginal productivity of water from supple- mentary irrigation in...