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Abstract:
We use SSCI data to generate subdiscipline-specific rankings of economics journals for each of 16 different JEL categories. Not surprisingly, a small core of elite journals dominate all subdisciplines. Beyond that core, however, there is considerable variation in journal rankings, depending on the subdiscipline involved. This disaggregated approach also permits estimation
of the relative weights implicitly associated with each field in traditional disciplinary journal rankings -- applied economics fields implicitly carry zero weight -- and the construction of alternative journal rankings based on explicit weighting of subdisciplines, as might be more appropriate, for example, in judging the publications records of individuals with job descriptions focused on particular, applied fields in economics.

Abstract:
In light of widespread specialization of research and teaching, it seems appropriate to supplement the existing general rankings of economics journals with subdiscipline-specific rankings. That is the primary objective of this paper. The availability of subdiscipline-specific rankings also permits both (i) alternative journal ranking methods for the general discipline that account for the breadth of a journal's impact across specialized fields, and (ii) estimation of the relative weights implicitly associated with each field in traditional disciplinary journal rankings. The results are robust to the exclusion of self-citations.

Abstract:
Longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty. While a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty, this paper develops an asset-based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep-rooted, persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes. Drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies, this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term, persistent structural poverty. We also propose an extension of the Foster-Greer Thorbecke class of poverty measures to provide a natural measure of long-term welfare status. The paper closes with reflections on how asset-based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies.

Abstract:
This paper advances a holistic ecological approach based on a three-compartment model. This approach favors policy initiatives that lie at the intersection of the three major areas of concern common to most environmental controversies: environmental protection, provision of basic human needs, and advancing economic welfare. In support of this approach, we propose a "pluralistic stewardship" integrating core elements of anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. After presenting the basics of our model, we then explain why it is important to identify and promote a holistic ecological approach to sustainability. Here we employ the economic concept of path dependence, emphasizing that there exist multiple paths society can follow in environmental ethics and policy but once one has been chosen, implicitly or explicitly, there may be little opportunity to reverse such choices.

Abstract:
This paper advances a holistic ecological approach based on a three-compartment model. This approach favors policy initiatives that lie at the intersection of the three major areas of concern common to most environmental controversies: environmental protection, provision of basic human needs, and advancing economic welfare. In support of this approach, we propose a "pluralistic stewardship" integrating core elements of anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. After presenting the basics of our model, we then explain why it is important to identify and promote a holistic ecological approach to sustainability. Here we employ the economic concept of path dependence, emphasizing that there exist multiple paths society can follow in environmental ethics and policy but once one has been chosen, implicitly or explicitly, there may be little opportunity to reverse such choices.

Abstract:
The basic logic of food aid for food security is simple. Food aid should flow in response to food availability shortfalls that might cause undernutrition. This paper explores the empirical relationship between food aid flows per capita from the United States' PL480 programs and nonconcessional food availability per capita in PL480 recipient economies. If food aid indeed stabilizes food availability, then per capita food aid flows should be inversely related to recipients' per capita nonconcessional food availability, in terms of levels, deviations from trend, or both. This is an important and empirically testable hypothesis that, to the best of my knowledge, has not yet been studied.

Abstract:
This paper explores the empirical relationship between U.S. food aid flows per capita and nonconcessional food availability per capita in PL 480 recipient economies. The evidence suggests PL 480, while modestly progressive in its distribution, is if anything procyclical in recipient economies. Food aid fails to stabilize food availability. Both increased domestic food production--i.e., agricultural development--and commercial trade appear more effective than food aid in advancing food security objectives through the stabilization of food availability per capita in low-income economies.

Abstract:
In the 1992 United States presidential campaign, Bill Clinton and his staff regularly invoked the forceful reminder "It's the economy, stupid!" in order to maintain a tight focus on the core issue that would ultimately decide their electoral success or failure. This initially seemed reductionist to many observers, because a presidential campaign is a complex affair, with myriad issues and pressures confronting the candidate every day. But Clinton and his staff were ultimately proved correct. Most of the important issues that could ignite or derail their campaign did boil down to the economy, and their famous, ruthless focus proved highly successful.

This paper advances the argument that similar focus on issues of targeting are essential if food aid is to succeed in its core mission to contribute to human development by providing temporary relief of food insecurity among poor peoples in the world. The issue of "targeting" concerns the who, the when, the what and the how questions surrounding transfers: is aid reaching people who need it (and not flowing to people who do not need it), when they need it, in appropriate form, and through effective modalities? There has been considerable research in recent years on targeting transfers generally, much of it motivated by the search for effective targeting mechanisms that do not require costly administrative screening.

Targeting is of special importance in food aid for two basic reasons. First, food is a critical resource. People who go without enough and appropriate food for even a relatively short period of time can suffer irreversible health effects of undernutrition and related diseases and injuries. Therefore, reaching beneficiaries who would otherwise suffer undernutrition, in a timely manner, and in an appropriate form is especially important for the effectiveness of food transfers. And if done right, food transfers can be fundamental to effective development strategy, by safeguarding the most valuable asset of the poor: the human capital embodied in their health and education.

Second, the key alleged problems surrounding food aid - displaced international trade, depressed producer prices in recipient countries, labor supply disincentives, delivery delays, misuse by intermediaries, diversion to resale or feeding livestock or alcohol brewing, dependency, inattention to beneficiaries' micronutrient needs, etc. - all revolve ultimately around questions of targeting. If the donor community could improve the targeting of food aid, it could improve the effectiveness of food aid in accomplishing its primary humanitarian and development aim - the maintenance of valuable human capital - and reduce many of the errors that sometimes make food aid controversial, ineffective, or both.

A limited amount of descriptive research has explored ex post whether food aid has reached intended beneficiaries, and has found considerable targeting errors of inclusion (providing aid to the non-needy) and exclusion (failure to reach the needy) at both macro and micro levels. There have also been considerable efforts at improving ex ante food aid targeting through the development and refinement of early warning systems, vulnerability mapping, and similar tools, so that aid might reach needy people in a more reliable and timely fashion.

This paper offers a brief interpretive review of this evidence. Section I summarizes the empirical evidence on food aid targeting at both macro- and micro-levels, emphasizing the inherent tradeoff between errors of exclusion (missing intended beneficiaries) and errors of inclusion (providing transfers to the non-needy). Section II then discusses the consequences of targeting errors, again looking at both errors of exclusion and inclusion and at micro- as well as macro-levels. Section III reviews some of the options available for improving targeting.

Abstract:
"Can't get ahead for falling behind." The entrapment and powerlessness this phrase evokes applies as much to development policy caught in a vicious circle of vulnerability, crisis and reactive aid as it does to the lives of the very people aid policies are designed to benefit. We consider these in turn, first exploring the trap of reactive aid which recent research suggests is costly of limited effectiveness, and commonly crowds out efforts to address underlying structures that create and perpetuate vulnerability. We then consider the related micro-level poverty traps that emerging analysis attributes largely to the ills of dysfunctional factor markets compounded by social exclusion. Both traps can be escaped only through a simultaneous effort to retarget development assistance to firm up factor markets and crowd-in investment. Foreign aid must be properly targeted toward remedying market deficiencies that set vulnerability traps for both the poorest and for development assistance.

Abstract:
This paper introduces a method for estimating structural labor supply models in the presence of unobservable wages and deviations of households' marginal revenue product of self-employed labor from their shadow wage. This method is therefore robust to a wide range of assumptions about labor allocation decisions in the presence of uncertainty, market frictions, locational preferences, etc. We illustrate the method using data from rice producers in Côte d'Ivoire. These data, like previous studies, reveal significant, systematic differences between shadow wages and the marginal revenue product of family farm labor. We demonstrate how one can exploit systematic deviations, in the present case related to household characteristics such as the land/labor endowment ratio, to control for both unobservable wages and prospective allocative inefficiency in labor allocation in structural household labor supply estimation.

Abstract:
This paper introduces a method for estimating structural labor supply models in the presence of unobservable wages and deviations of households' marginal revenue product of self-employed labor from their shadow wage. This method is therefore remarkably robust to a wide range of assumptions about labor allocation decisions in the presence of uncertainty, market frictions, locational preferences, etc. Data from rice producers in Cote d'Ivoire reveal significant, systematic differences between shadow wages and the marginal revenue product of family farm labor, deviations strongly related to household characteristics, particularly land/labor endowment ratio. Adjustments for estimated allocative inefficiency lead to more plausible and precise parameter estimates of the structural household labor supply equation.

Abstract:
This paper starts from the premise that diversification of assets, activities, and incomes is important to African rural households, in that diversification into nonfarm income constitutes on average about 45 percent of incomes, and the push and pull factors driving that diversification are bound to persist. From that premise, we noted that the empirical study of diversification has been beset by practical problems and issues relating to (1) definitions and concepts, (2) data collection, and to (3) measurement of the nature and extent of diversification. The paper addressed each of those problems. Two points are of special interest to the overall conceptualization of diversification research. The first is that empirical studies have exhibited a wide variety - bordering on confusion - of systems of classification of assets, activities, and incomes as pertains to diversification behavior. We argued that the classification should conform to that used in standard practice of national accounts and macro input-output table construction, classifying activities into economic sectors that have standard definitions, and the classification of which does not depend on the location or functional type (wage- or self-employment) of the activity. We further argued that given a sectoral classification, it is useful to make a functional and locational categorization of the activity, and keep each of these three dimensions of the activity - sectoral, functional, and locational - separate and distinct so as to avoid confusion. The second is that it is useful to have an image of a production function in mind when analyzing the components of diversification behavior: (1) assets are the factors of production, representing the capacity of the household to diversify; (2) activities are the ex ante production flows of asset services; (3) incomes are the ex post flows of incomes, and it is crucial to note that the goods and services produced by activities need to be valued by prices, formed by markets at meso and macro levels, in order to be the measured outcomes called incomes. "Livelihoods" is a term used frequently in recent diversification research, and while its meaning differs somewhat over studies, it generally means household and community behavior, with respect to holdings and use of assets and the productive activities to which the assets are applied. The link between livelihoods and incomes needs to be made by valuing the output of livelihood activities at market (and/or virtual) prices. That valuation permits an analytical link between household/community behavior (thus a micro view of diversification) and the aggregate functioning of markets (thus a link with the meso and macro levels and the policies pertaining thereto).

Abstract:
This paper introduces a new market analysis methodology based on maximum likelihood estimation of a mixture distribution model incorporating price, transfer cost, and trade flow data. Not only does this method obviate many statistical problems associated with conventional price analysis methods, it also permits differentiation between market integration and competitive market equilibrium. The model generates estimates of the frequency of alternative regimes, combinations of which provide useful, intuitive measures of intermarket tradability, competitive market equilibrium, perfect integration, segmented equilibrium, and segmented disequilibrium. An application to trade in soybean meal among Pacific Rim economies demonstrates the usefulness of the method.

Abstract:
This paper introduces a new market analysis methodology based on maximum likelihood estimation of a mixture distribution model incorporating price, transfer cost, and trade flow data. Not only does this method obviate statistical problems associated with conventional price analysis methods, it also permits differentiation between market integration and competitive market equilibrium. The model generates estimates of the frequency of alternative regimes, combinations of which provide useful, intuitive measures of intermarket tradability, competitive market equilibrium, perfect integration, segmented equilibrium, and segmented disequilibrium. An application to trade in soybean meal among Pacific Rim economies demonstrates the usefulness of the method.

Abstract:
This paper introduces a new market analysis methodology based on maximum likelihood estimation of a mixture distribution model incorporating price, transfer cost, and trade flow data. Not only does this method obviate statistical problems associated with conventional price analysis methods, it also permits differentiation between market integration and competitive market equilibrium. The model generates estimates of the frequency of alternative regimes, combinations of which provide useful, intuitive measures of intermarket tradability, competitive market equilibrium, perfect integration, segmented equilibrium, and segmented disequilibrium. An application to trade in soybean meal among Pacific Rim economies demonstrates the usefulness of the method.

Abstract:
This paper offers a new, comparative perspective on income diversification in African agriculture. Comparative analysis using household data from three quite different sites -in Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya and Rwanda reveals distinct livelihood strategies, some of which offer demonstrably superior returns relative to others. We argue that local market failures cause asset endowments and market access to condition the livelihood strategies among which different households can choose, leading to a more nuanced relationship between poverty and non-farm income earnings than the existing literature recognizes.

Abstract:
This paper takes a new empirical look at the longstanding question of the effect of exchange rate volatility on international trade flows by studying the case of Taiwan's exports to the United States from 1989-1998. In particular, we employ sectoral level, monthly data and an innovative rational expectation-based multivariate GARCH-M estimator with corrections for leptokurtic errors that is consistent with the core hypothesis that traders' forward contracting behavior might be affected by exchange rate risk. We find that real exchange rate risk has insignificant effects in most sectors, although agricultural trade volumes appear highly responsive to real exchange rate volatility. These results differ significantly from those obtained using more conventional and restrictive modeling assumptions.

Exchange Rate, Trade, Multivariate GARCH

Abstract:
A longstanding puzzle in comparative economics is the "developmental paradox," the tendency for government support for agriculture to increase with national income and to decrease with the proportion of economic activity and of the population in agriculture. This paper offers a microeconomic explanation for that puzzle. It establishes analytically the microeconomic basis for coalition alignments with respect to food price policy, then numerically simulates the comparative static effects of alternative food policies on coalition structure. A parsimonious household model applied to a heterogeneously endowed society demonstrates how variation in individual welfare effects might beget distinct coalitions in the debate over food price policy and how those policies are inextricably linked to land, population, and technology policies in food agriculture. Moreover, coalition alignments on particular policy debates are path-dependent. In particular, food price policy creates its own political support.

Abstract:
A longstanding puzzle in comparative economics is the "developmental paradox," the tendency for government support for agriculture to increase with national income and to decrease with the proportion of economic activity and of the population in agriculture. This paper offers a microeconomic explanation for that puzzle. It establishes analytically the microeconomic basis for coalition alignments with respect to food price policy, then numerically simulates the comparative static effects of alternative food policies on coalition structure. A parsimonious household model applied to a heterogeneously endowed society demonstrates how variation in individual welfare effects might beget distinct coalitions in the debate over food price policy and how those policies are inextricably linked to land, population, and technology policies in food agriculture. Moreover, coalition alignments on particular policy debates are path-dependent. In particular, food price policy creates its own political support.

Abstract:
This paper provides an overview of the state of the livestock marketing channel in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, based mainly on secondary data, examines the relevant literature dealing with risk in livestock markets in sub-Saharan Africa, determines critical livestock marketing research needs in our study area of southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya and introduces a conceptual framework that we think can usefully guide further empirical research. We also examine methodologies that could be used to evaluate the market risks faced by pastoralists.

Abstract:
We present a model of market participation in which the presence of nonnegligible fixed costs leads to non-zero censoring of the traditional double-hurdle regression. Fixed costs arise when household resources must be devoted a priori to the decision to participate in the market. These costs - usually a cost of time - motivate two-step decision-making and focus attention on the minimum-efficient scale of operations (the minimum amount of milk sales) at which market entry becomes viable. This focus, in turn, motivates a non-zero-censored Tobit regression estimated through routine application of Markov chain Monte Carlo Methods.

market participation, fixed costs, double-hurdle model, censored

Abstract:
The history of agricultural markets in developing countries reflects attempts to establish the appropriate government responses to the inefficiencies created by incomplete institutional and physical infrastructure and imperfect competition. Government intervention in the 1960s and 1970s to resolve market failures gave way in the 1980s to market-oriented liberalization to "get prices right" and, more recently, to "get institutions right". But markets openness may accentuate the latent dualism of a modern, efficient marketing sector, accessible only to those with adequate scale and capital, alongside a traditional, inefficient marketing channel to which the poor are effectively restricted.

Abstract:
The importance of technological advance to economic growth has become accepted fact. Yet the answers to questions of who adopts new technologies, how quickly, and at what cost to society remain elusive. While these issues are not unique throughout history, the advent of biological and chemical technologies that are both divisible and scale-neutral and the experiences referred to as the "Green Revolution" in the latter-half of the twentieth century throughout much of Asia have fostered a lively and long debate on the growth and particularly the distributional consequences of technological change in the agriculture of developing countries.

Abstract:
Food aid remains contentious, in part because of presumed producer significant in adding to food availability in many low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, helping to reduce the gap between food consumption needs and supply from domestic production and inventories and commercial imports. Food aid remains a contentious subject, however, and there have been many recent pleas for more effective use of the resource. This study explores how food aid might be used for domestic food market development to facilitate poverty alleviation and economic growth. There are obvious risks to using food aid for market development, just as there have been in using food aid to try to stimulate agricultural development. Because food aid necessarily expands local food supply, it needs to be well targeted if adverse producer price effects are to be avoided. In particular, if food aid can be targeted so as to relieve short-term working capital and transport capacity constraints to the development of downstream processing and distribution capacity in recipient country food marketing channels, for example by helping build farmer cooperative groups, then food aid could have salutary effects on sub-Saharan African agriculture.

Abstract:
This paper offers an informal theory of a special sort of poverty trap, one in which multiple dynamic equilibria exist simultaneously at multiple (micro, meso and/or macro) scales of analysis and are self-reinforcing through feedback effects. Small adjustments at any one of these levels are unlikely to move the system away from its dominant, stable dynamic equilibrium. Governments, markets and communities are simultaneously weak in places characterized by fractal poverty traps. No unit operates at a high-level equilibrium in such a system. All seem simultaneously trapped in low-level equilibria. The fractal poverty traps formulation suggests four interrelated strategic emphases for poverty reduction strategies.

Poverty traps, thresholds, Africa, chronic poverty, economic growth, millenium development goals

Abstract:
This paper develops a model coupling wildlife population dynamics to endogenous human consumption and poaching behavior in an environment of imperfect labor and product markets and static agricultural production technology subject to environmental shocks. Using a model of the Serengeti wildebeest herd, we simulate how long an integrated conservation and development project based on managed wildlife harvest might effectively delay biodiversity loss by preempting poaching. Alternative interventions that more directly tackle the problem of time varying returns to peasant agricultural labor appear to offer more durable solutions to the challenge of wildlife conservation in the midst of endemic rural poverty.

Abstract:
This paper develops a model coupling wildlife population dynamics to endogenous human consumption and poaching behavior in an environment of imperfect labor and product markets and static agricultural production technology subject to environmental shocks. Using a model of the Serengeti wildebeest herd, we simulate how long an integrated conservation and development project based on managed wildlife harvest might effectively delay biodiversity loss by preempting poaching. Alternative interventions that more directly tackle the problem of time varying returns to peasant agricultural labor appear to offer more durable solutions to the challenge of wildlife conservation in the midst of endemic rural poverty.

Abstract:
Pastoralists in East Africa's arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) regularly confront climatic shocks that plunge them into massive herd die-offs and loss of scarce wealth. One of the most puzzling features of pastoralist behavior in times of stress has been their relatively low and non-responsive rate of marketed off-take of animals when faced with likely losses to herd mortality. As Figure 1, from Desta (1999), finds in 17-year herd history data from Borana pastoralists in southern Ethiopia, mortality always exceeds net sales as a share of beginning period herd size, with the latter never exceeding three percent and moving hardly at all in response to shocks to rangeland carrying capacity that cause regular spikes in mortality rates. This case might be more pronounced than others, but the basic pattern is widely believed representative of herd dynamics and marketing patterns among east African ASAL pastoralists.

Abstract:
Food-for-work (FFW) programs are commonly used both for short-term relief and long-term development purposes. In the latter capacity, they are increasingly used for natural resources management projects. Barrett, Holden and Clay (forthcoming) assess the suitability of FFW programs as insurance to cushion the poor against short-term, adverse shocks that could, in the absence of a safety net, have permanent repercussions. In this paper we explore the complementary question of FFW programs' potential to reduce poverty and promote sustainable land use in the longer run through induced changes in investment patterns.

FFW programs commonly aim to produce or maintain potentially valuable public goods necessary to stimulate productivity and thus income growth. Among the most common projects are road building, reforestation, and the installation of terracing or irrigation. In the abstract, public goods such as these are unambiguously good. There is a danger, however, that such programs could discourage private soil and water conservation and crowd out private investment. How important are such effects and when are these effects small or large and when and how can they be reduced? How do market characteristics, timing and design of FFW programs affect this? When, where and how can FFW programs more efficiently reduce poverty and promote more sustainable land management? The paper aims to answer these questions.

Much recent empirical research has focused on the shorter-term targeting issue of whether FFW and related workfare programs efficiently target the poor (Dev 1995, Von Braun 1995, Webb 1995, Subbarao 1997, Clay et al. 1998, Devereux 1999, Jayne et al. 1999, Ravallion 1999, Teklu and Asefa 1999, Atwood et al. 2000, Gebremedhin and Swinton 2000, Haddad and Adato 2001, Jalan and Ravallion 2001). Much less research has been focused on the longer-term effects of FFW. Yet the large share of hunger worldwide arises due to chronic deprivation and vulnerability, not short-term shocks (Speth 1993, Barrett 2002). Also most of the FFW programs in Ethiopia have long-term development goals and are formally distinguished from the disaster relief FFW programs (Aas and Mellemstrand 2002). It is therefore appropriate to evaluate these programs based on their long-term goals and not only on the basis of short-term targeting. In a case study in Tigray Aas and Mellemstrand (2002) found that the FFW recipients considered the long-term benefits of FFW as more important than the short-term benefits of food provision.

FFW programs may produce valuable public goods. For example, Von Braun et al. (1999) report multiplier effects of a FFW-built road in the Ethiopian lowlands. Public provision of public goods may be socially desirable because private investment in soil and water conservation and tree planting may be well below socially optimal levels due to poverty and market imperfections (Holden, Shiferaw and Wik 1998, Holden and Shiferaw 2002, Holden and Yohannes 2002, Pender and Kerr 1998), tenure insecurity (Gebremedhin and Swinton 2000, Holden, Benin, Shiferaw and Pender 2003), lack of technical knowledge and coordination problems across farms (Hagos and Holden 2002). There is, however, also a danger that FFW programs crowd out private investments (Gebremedhin and Swinton 2000).

We analyze these issues using multiple methods. First, section II introduces a simple theoretical framework for understanding the analytically ambiguous effects of FFW programs on sustainable land use patterns. We first present the basic intuition in a static framework to illustrate the selection, crowding out and targeting issues, before generalizing it to a dynamic model to illustrate the possible insurance and crowding in effects of FFW. Section III then uses an applied, dynamic bio-economic farm household model applied to a less-favoured area in Ethiopia to investigate via numerical simulation how household welfare and land use patterns vary with changes in environmental and FFW program design parameters. Section IV presents econometric evidence based on survey panel data from northern Ethiopia to assess the relationship between FFW and private investment in conservation. Section V discusses our findings and fleshes them out a bit with further empirical evidence. Section VI concludes.

Abstract:
In this world of plenty, almost half of the world's six billion people live on two dollars a day or less and the number living on less than one dollar a day has increased over the past fifteen years (World Bank 2000). Between one third and one half suffer undernutrition due to insufficient intake of calories, protein or critical micronutrients such as vitamin A, iodine and iron. More than one child in five lives in acute poverty. Why does such unnecessary injustice continue to disfigure a rich, technologically advanced world and what can be done to care for the poor and thereby to care for and honor God, as the Gospels instruct us? In attempting to answer those questions, at least partly, this paper offers some insights from recent research in economics, as well as my concerns about the limits to economic understanding of these humanitarian, intellectual and spiritual challenges.

The Christian's interest in poverty is rather obvious. Jesus routinely expressed special concern for and devotion to the poor. We are called to feed the hungry, nurse the sick, and clothe the naked. The impulse to assist is obviously not unique to Christendom. Nor is it especially the comparative advantage of economics, for the instinct of economists is to look beyond the symptoms of poverty that indisputably demand prompt humanitarian response, and to seek instead the causal mechanisms that perpetuate poverty. In reflecting on the economics of poverty, my focus is therefore not on humanitarian response operations but, rather, on the mechanisms that necessitate the grim but honorable and too-necessary work of humanitarian relief agencies.

Most of this essay was composed during a trip to some of my field research sites in Madagascar, a fascinating country where extraordinarily high species endemism rates fuel intense interest by conservationists and where the unique blend of Polynesian and Bantu cultures has long drawn the attention of cultural anthropologists. Such obvious unique qualities aside, Madagascar is nonetheless the quintessential poor economy. According to the most recent nationally representative household survey data, 69.6% of the population of Madagascar falls below a national poverty line equivalent to US $0.42/day per capita. More than 80 percent of the population lives in rural areas and 92% of the poor live in rural areas. The rural poor depend heavily on agriculture for their livelihoods, both as farmers and as workers on others' farms. Yet agricultural productivity is weak and the soils, forests and hydrological systems on which smallholder farming fundamentally depends are under significant threat from anthropogenic and natural causes. Because it so typifies poor economies, I illustrate some of my core points with brief anecdotes from a few of the many Malagasy who have been some of my most important teachers, not only about the economics of poverty, but also about the dignity and majesty of human life and the whole of God's Creation.

Abstract:
The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has received a fair amount of attention in recent years both in and outside of Madagascar, where incredible yield increases have been achieved using few external inputs and less water and seed. SRI initially seemed well suited to Madagascar due to the unavailability or cost of fertilizer and the inability of most farmers to grow enough rice to feed their families. Despite its promise, farmer adoption of SRI in the areas where it was promoted has been low, "disadoption" (abandonment) of the method has been high, and those who continue to practice the method rarely do so on more than half of their land.

To help explain this phenomenon from an economic perspective, a study was conducted in five communities in Madagascar in 2000, using both participatory research methods and a household survey of over 300 farmers. Based on the study, we find that SRI is difficult for most farmers to practice because it requires significant additional labor inputs at a time of the year when liquidity is low and labor effort is already high. Thus, the poorer the farmer and the more his income depends on rainy season crops, the less able he is to take advantage of the technology.

Abstract:
Markets aggregate demand and supply across actors distributed in space. Well-integrated markets play a fundamental role in ensuring that macrolevel economic policies change the incentives and constraints faced by micro-level decision-makers, in distributing risk and in preserving incentives to adopt improved production technologies. Yet the literature is replete with evidence of forgone arbitrage opportunities in both intra- and inter-national trade. Given limited data and the restrictive assumptions of existing empirical methods, economists still have only a fragile empirical foundation for reaching clear judgements about spatial market integration as a guide for corporate or government policy.

Abstract:
Persistent poverty is one of the core challenges faced by Christians and by development scholars and practitioners alike. There is no question that Jesus was concerned about the poor - both materially and spiritually. From his first public address in the Synagogue in Nazareth, His home town, where He concluded by saying that He had come to "preach good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18), Jesus lived the gospel in word and deed. We, as Christian men and women, whether researchers or practitioners, are called to do no less. When Jesus made His parting remarks to His disciples, He said (John 20:21) "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." emphasizing that we are to do likewise. This concern permeates the Old and New Testament, another example being the words of the prophet Micah (6:8):

"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

We are here to think through together some of the implications of this mandate for ourselves as researchers and practitioners. More specifically, to consider how the work we do as researchers can inform our work in the field as practitioners in such a way as to more effectively help those who are materially poor.

In most wealthy countries, poverty is generally a short-lived phenomenon. This is not the case throughout the developing world. In the United States, for example, less than one quarter of those living below the poverty line remain below the poverty line 12 months later and only 13 percent are still poor 24 months later. Although our cross-sectional poverty of 11.7 percent is relatively high - although it must also be borne in mind that our poverty line is relatively high, too - in the United States, the long-term, structurally poor are a very small minority, roughly one percent of the population.

Elsewhere, long-term, structural poverty is the norm. World Bank figures show that, as of 1999, 2.78 billion people lived on less than $2/day, most of them in Asia, but with sub-Saharan Africa evincing the largest - and growing - share of its population in severe poverty (World Bank, 2002). Unlike in the United States, we do not yet know a great deal about the expected duration of poverty for people in the developing world. While the median time in poverty in the United States is 4.5 months (Naifeh, 1998), the median time in poverty in rural Bangladesh, Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya or Madagascar is roughly a lifetime. Of particular concern to Christians, the expectation of lifetime impoverishment tends to foster hopelessness. Without hope, people find it hard to contemplate or effect change. With hope, many things become possible. The Gospel message and the practical challenges of reducing persistent poverty thus go hand-in-hand with helping the downtrodden to find hope.

We also know that most of the world's poor - by most estimates, 70 percent or so - live in rural areas and most work, at least part-time, in agriculture. For this reason, agricultural and rural development is an essential component of any reasonable strategy to combat persistent poverty. In the words of T. W. Schultz's 1979 Nobel address, "Most of the people in the world are poor, so if we knew the economics of being poor we would know much of the economics that really matters. Most of the world's poor people earn their living from agriculture, so if we knew the economics of agriculture we would know much of the economics of being poor." But the challenge is daunting. To increase incomes by just one dollar a day for the world's rural poor will require an increase of more than $700 billion in annual rural earnings. In this paper, we strive to highlight key issues that Christian development organizations must face as they set priorities and make design choices about how to make progress toward that goal.

Abstract:
People living in developing countries are particularly vulnerable to the adverse consequences of a range of unpredictable, even unanticipated, economic shocks that affect the price and availability of food, and their ability to purchase and produce food for own consumption. Indeed, the World Development Report 2000/1 emphasizes such vulnerability as an essential dimension of poverty. A wide range of economic crises - e.g., sharp adjustment in countries' external terms of trade, hyperinflation, volatility in the domestic policy regime - or non-economic disasters - severe climate variation, crop failure, volatility in the domestic policy regime - can dramatically increase vulnerability to becoming food insecure, to not having access to sufficient food, in terms of quality, quantity and diversity, for an active and healthy life without risk of loss of such access. 1 This increased vulnerability applies to both transitory and chronic food insecurity. The former refers to a sudden (and often precipitous) drop in the ability to purchase or grow enough food to meet physiological requirements for good health and activity. 2 Chronic food insecurity refers to a persistent inability to meet minimum nutrient intake requirements.

Abstract:
Persistent poverty has plagued rural Africa for generations and, by some accounts, is becoming more widespread and entrenched. As a consequence, governments and donors have renewed and intensified their commitment to poverty reduction. This is reflected around the continent in poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs), efforts at decentralizing public goods and services delivery and the rise of participatory poverty appraisals intended to empower the poor, and a range of other policy changes. In some cases, one can legitimately wonder about the extent to which these reforms are heartfelt, rather than merely rhetorical and political, and the extent to which national and international elites are prepared to make sacrifices so as to advance an authentic poverty reduction agenda. But as one who has worked on problems of African poverty for two decades now, I feel quite comfortable asserting that there has been a palpable increase in recent years in the attention paid and sincerity surrounding questions of poverty reduction by policymakers and donors.

Abstract:
This document provides the Decision Tree Tool itself for the analysis of response options - cash, local purchase or imported food aid. The framework is kept simple for ease of communication: a sequence of specific questions to be answered, each matched with data needs and diagnostic tools commonly useful for effectively answering the question at hand. Maxwell, Lentz and Barrett (2007) explain the rationale for the Tool and its constituent questions. Users will want to consult that document for essential background information and for supplemental considerations that fall outside the scope of this tool. The extensive appendices to this document enumerate common secondary data sources (Appendix 1), primary data collection methods (Appendix 2), and offer more detail (and appropriate technical references) on the specifics of individual diagnostic tools (Appendix 3). Users will want to consult the appendices in detail before trying to implement the tool.

Abstract:
This paper breaks new ground in the literature on bioprospecting by evaluating the local welfare effects associated with the successful bioprospecting-driven commercialization of argan oil in southwestern Morocco. The principal finding is that even when locals appear well-positioned to reap the ex post benefits of a bioprospecting success, one can reject the hypothesis that successful bioprospecting fuels local development and reduces poverty. Most locals participate only superficially in the bioprospecting-based boom and the benefits that do trickle down to local households appear to be regressively distributed, both regionally and between households. The key lies in understanding how opening up to new markets may induce endogenous product differentiation that easily excludes locals, especially the poor, and how ex ante market access - a variable commonly directly related to wealth - conditions households' capacity to participate in market-induced producer windfalls.

Abstract:
Globalization brings the suffering of the world's poor directly to the attention of those fortunate to have been born non-poor in high-income countries. And there is plenty of suffering. In 2004, an estimated 969 million people - more than 18% of the world's population - lived on less than roughly $1/day per person and were thus classified as "extremely poor" by global standards (Chen and Ravallion 2007). Indeed, outside of China, the developing world has not enjoyed any sustained progress over the past quarter century in reducing the number of extremely poor people. Meanwhile, in some regions the number of extremely poor people has increased significantly. In sub-Saharan Africa, even in the face of population growth, the extreme poor have consistently accounted for 41-48 percent of the subcontinent's residents since good estimates began around 1980.

For Christians especially, Jesus' injunction that, "Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me." (Matthew 25:40) reminds us that to ignore the suffering of others is an offense against God. Hence the Christian's natural instinct to provide aid to the poor. However, good intentions and good deeds do not always translate into favorable results, as the checkered history of foreign aid makes clear.

Foreign aid - the transfer of government resources to poorer countries - has long been deemed an essential part of any strategy to reduce poverty and hunger. It encompasses both short-term relief of suffering resulting from natural disasters and war, as well as longer-term development to end chronic deprivation. The modern era of foreign aid began with post-World War II reconstruction, in particular the Marshall Plan, when the United States devoted 2-3 percent of its national income annually to restore war-ravaged Europe. Once European recovery was well underway by the second half of the 1950s, Europe's former colonies in Africa and Asia began achieving independence and became the new foci for foreign aid. Over the intervening half century, aid has become an industry, professionalized in United Nations agencies, multilateral development banks and a vast network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) committed to humanitarian relief, long-term development, or both. Cassen (1987), Mosley (1987) and Tarp (2000) provide excellent histories of foreign aid.

Abstract:
Smallholder agricultural production depends heavily on environmental production conditions that are largely exogenously determined. Yet few data sets collect necessary, detailed information on environmental production conditions. This oversight raises the spectre of likely omitted variables bias because farmers' input choices typically respond in part to environmental conditions. Moreover, because environmental production conditions are rarely symmetrically distributed, the omission also generally leads to upward bias in estimated technical inefficiency and to biased estimates of the correlates of estimated technical inefficiency as well. Using panel data from 464 traditional rice plots in Cote d'Ivoire, we show that controlling for heterogeneous environmental production conditions significantly changes inferences, perhaps especially with respect to smallholder rice farmers' estimated technical inefficiency.

Abstract:
There exists negligible empirical evidence to either refute or confirm the pervasive belief that food aid has significant disincentive effects on recipient food production at both micro and macro levels. This paper aims to fill this void. Using household level data from rural Ethiopia, we demonstrate that while simple descriptive statistics and naïve regressions indeed appear consistent with the disincentive effects hypothesis, those results appear to result from failure to control properly for endogeneity associated with targeting-related placement effects. Once one controls properly for such effects, no empirical support remains for the hypothesis that food aid creates disincentive effects. The macroeconomic evidence yields similar findings. Applying vector autoregression methods to a 1970-2000 panel of national-level data, with proper controls for country-specific unobservables, disasters and rainfall anomalies, we similarly find that food aid has no disincentive effect on food production. If anything, it has proved stimulative in sub-Saharan Africa.

Abstract:
In this paper, we address the broad question of where to locate authority for tropical biodiversity conservation. In so doing, we advance four claims. First, the current fashion for CBNRM overreaches the indisputable place of local communities in tropical conservation efforts. An unfortunate irony of the current celebration of local authority is that it facilitates the abdication of global responsibility. Second, given variability in scale and institutional capability, hybrid designs involving multiple layers of nested institutions offer the most promise. Third, the greatest challenge to implementing such designs is the (often growing) weakness of existing tropical institutions at all levels. Fourth, rehabilitating such institutions, facilitating ongoing coordination among them, and introducing new institutional forms appropriate to particular conservation challenges will require, at both international and national levels, significant policy reorientations and greater commitments of financial and technical assistance.

Abstract:
Discussions on food aid and dependency often draw on what appears to be a broad body of evidence, but closer inspection reveals that much of this does not in fact demonstrate a causal link between the two. This desk review has three objectives: (i) to identify the pathways through which negative dependency might arise; (ii) to outline how the targeting and management of food aid might affect the likelihood of negative dependency as a result of emergency operations or follow-on protracted relief and recovery operations; and (iii) to suggest indicators that assessment teams might employ in context-sensitive evaluations to reduce the risk of fostering negative dependency through food aid.

Abstract:
This paper uses a unique, spatially-explicit dataset to study the link between agricultural performance and rural poverty in Madagascar. We show that, controlling for geographical and physical characteristics, communes that have higher rates of adoption of improved agricultural technologies and, consequently, higher crop yields enjoy lower food prices, higher real wages for unskilled workers and better welfare indicators. The empirical evidence strongly favors support for improved agricultural production as an important part of any strategy to reduce the high poverty rates currently prevalent in rural Madagascar.

Abstract:
To satisfy continued growth in food demand without further degrading already low fertility soils or extensifying onto fragile margins, African farmers must pursue "sustainable agricultural intensification" (SAI). SAI requires adequate use of capital to maintain soil fertility and conserve the land while meeting productivity goals. Nevertheless, many African farmers are either unsustainably intensifying (i.e., mining their soils and degrading the resource base) or extensifying onto fragile margins because they cannot meet needs on existing cropland. These deviations from the SAI path are often due to inappropriate policies that reduce farmers' incentives and capacity to pursue SAI, in particular to economic liberalization measures that removed public support for farming, thus increasing input prices and market risk, without concomitant public investments in institutional or physical infrastructure to induce profitable sustainable intensification by smallholders.

Abstract:
The superficial homogeneity of pastoral populations in the east African rangelands has long prompted policies and projects based on stylized understandings of the threats facing these peoples. This paper uses the results of a participatory risk mapping exercise conducted among herders in the arid and semi-arid lands of southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya to show that quite predictable patterns of risk assessment exist within the broader group. Different groups - Men and women, rich and poor, those distant from or proximate to towns - articulate quite different concerns due to differences in objective exposure, subjective perception, ex ante mitigation capacity, and ex post coping capacity. Even relatively modest structural differences in economic activity patterns, agroclimatic conditions, proximity to towns, wealth, and gender roles lead to significant differences in risk assessment, with considerable implication for policies intended to relieve the daunting pressures these vulnerable populations face.

Abstract:
This paper studies variation in risk assessment by pastoralists in the arid and semi-arid lands of southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya. Despite superficial homogeneity among east African pastoralists, we show that there exists considerable within-group heterogeneity in their assessment of various risks. We conceptualize risk as comprised of four distinct components: objective exposure, subjective perception, ex ante mitigation capacity, and ex post coping capacity. This conceptualization provides an effective framework for understanding the observed heterogeneity as the natural consequence of (sometimes modest) structural differences in economic activity patterns, agroclimatic conditions, proximity to towns, wealth, and gender roles. It therefore provides a useful tool for drawing out the policy implications of subjects' expressed concerns about prospective livelihood hazards.

Abstract:
Food aid is an increasingly contentious subject. It is one of a handful of significant points of disagreement in current agricultural trade negotiations under the World Trade Organization (WTO)'s Doha Round, as the United States and the European Union wrangle over the possible trade displacement and developmental effects of food aid. Food aid is often blamed for creating disincentives for small farmers in recipient countries by depressing food prices, distorting markets, discouraging overdue policy reforms and fostering dependency. Humanitarian agencies distributing food aid have recently been accused of both manipulating individual recipients - for example the food-for-sex scandals in West Africa in 2001/2 - and being manipulated by major powers during international conflict and post-conflict recovery, as reflected in former Secretary of State Colin Powell's comment that the humanitarian agencies operating in Afghanistan is early 2002 were a significant "force multiplier" for the US military. Observers on all sides have decried the use of food aid as a political weapon in open warfare (e.g., Sudan) and internal political crises (e.g., Zimbabwe), as well as in diplomatic maneuvering (e.g., with North Korea).

Abstract:
This paper introduces a systematic but simple approach to classifying and ordering sources of risk faced by subject populations. By distinguishing between the incidence and severity of subjective risk perceptions, this method enhances understanding of the nature and variation of risks faced within a population. We demonstrate the usefulness of the method as applied to pastoralist communities in the arid and semi-arid lands of southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya. This method reveals the considerable heterogeneity of risk exposure and severity that exists within this seemingly homogeneous sector, particularly across strata defined by gender, wealth, and primary economic activity.

Abstract:
This chapter examines the extension of microfinance services to people in Kenya. Using data collected from seventeen Financial Service Associations (FSAs) founded by the Kenya Rural Enterprise Program (K-REP) Development Agency (KDA), we explore the intricacies of microfinance institutions emerging in these challenging environment.

Abstract:
A growing literature suggests that in low-income countries, households with few assets can be trapped in chronic poverty. This article reviews relevant threads of the poverty traps literature to motivate a description of the opportunities presented by innovative index-based risk transfer products. These products can be used to address some insurance and credit market failures that contribute to the persistence of poverty among households in low-income countries. Applications are considered at the micro, meso, and macro levels.

index-based risk transfer products, insurance, poverty traps, risk management

Abstract:
This paper explores the dynamics of smallholder technology adoption, with particular reference to a high-yielding, low-external input rice production method in Madagascar. We present a simple model of technology adoption by farm households in an environment of incomplete financial and land markets. We then use a probit model and a symmetrically trimmed least squares estimation of a dynamic Tobit model to analyze the decisions to adopt, expand and disadopt the method. We find that seasonal liquidity constraints discourage adoption by poorer farmers. Learning effects - both from extension agents and from other farmers - exert significant influence over adoption decisions.

Technology adoption, learning, the System of Rice Intensification, conformity effects

Abstract:
We use herd history data collected among pastoralists in southern Ethiopia to study stochastic wealth dynamics among a poor population. Although covariate rainfall shocks plainly matter, household-specific factors, including own herd size, account for most observed variability in wealth dynamics. We find no support for the tragedy of the commons hypothesis. Past studies may have conflated costly self-insurance with stocking rate externalities. Biophysical shocks move households between multiple dynamic wealth equilibria - the lowest suggesting a poverty trap - according to nonconvex path dynamics. These findings have broad implications for development and relief strategies among a poor population vulnerable to climatic shocks.

Abstract:
The literature on economic growth and development has focused considerable attention on questions of risk management and the possibility of multiple equilibria associated with poverty traps. We use herd history data collected among pastoralists in southern Ethiopia to study stochastic wealth dynamics among a very poor population. These data yield several novel findings. Although covariate rainfall shocks plainly matter, household-specific factors, including own herd size, account for most observed variability in wealth dynamics. Despite longstanding conventional wisdom about common property grazing lands, we find no statistical support for the tragedy of the commons hypothesis. It appears that past studies may have conflated costly self-insurance with stocking rate externalities. Such self-insurance is important in this setting because weak livestock markets and meager social insurance cause wealth to fluctuate largely in response to biophysical shocks. These shocks move households between multiple dynamic wealth equilibria toward which households converge following nonconvex path dynamics. The lowest equilibrium is consistent with the notion of a poverty trap. These findings have broad implications for the design of development and relief strategies among a poor population extraordinarily vulnerable to climatic shocks.

common property, covariate risk, Ethiopia, idiosyncratic risk, poverty traps, social insurance

Abstract:
Meeting the 1996 World Food Summit goal of halving chronic hunger in the world by 2015 will require more than 75,000 persons each day exiting the ranks of the food insecure. Is this feasible? Yes. Is the task simple? No. Widespread vulnerability is the complex product of asset poverty, rudimentary food production technologies, weak markets and social support networks, and misdirected formal assistance programs. Combatting vulnerability manifest as food insecurity will require sustained and substantial commitments on each of these fronts in the coming decades.

Abstract:
This paper presents comparative qualitative and quantitative evidence from rural Kenya and Madagascar in an attempt to untangle the causality behind persistent poverty. We find striking differences in welfare dynamics depending on whether one uses total income, including stochastic terms and inevitable measurement error, or the predictable, structural component of income based on a household's asset holdings. Our results suggest the existence of multiple dynamic asset and structural income equilibria, consistent with the poverty traps hypothesis. Furthermore, we find supporting evidence of locally increasing returns to assets and of risk management behavior consistent with poor households' defense of a critical asset threshold through asset smoothing.

Abstract:
Worldwide degradation of ecosystems has motivated a search for successful conservation approaches. The perceived failure of state-directed protected areas in the tropics has prompted experimentation with various forms of community management and co-management. Numerous case studies suggest that none of these approaches are effective universally, however, there exists little analytical or empirical work to identify under what conditions one arrangement will be more effective than another. This paper develops a model of optimal conservation design, in terms of locating authority for specific conservation tasks, as a function of prevailing biophysical, economic, and sociopolitical conditions.

Abstract:
This paper explores the interrelationship between poverty, risk, and deforestation by small farmers in the low-income tropics. A nonseparable household model reveals how exogenous shocks to the mean or variance of a food price distribution might affect peasants' incentives to clear forest. The resulting links between food price policy, farmer behavior, and deforestation offer an innovative explanation of the vicious cycle of peasant immiserization and tropical deforestation. An intriguing, testable hypothesis also emerges: that market-oriented reforms that increase the mean and variance of food prices may inadvertently stimulate deforestation in economies in which a sizable proportion of farmers are net buyers.

Abstract:
Marketing boards (state-controlled or state-sanctioned entities legally granted control over the purchase or sale of agricultural commodities) flourished in the 20th century in both developed and developing economies. Since the mid-1980s they have declined in number under pressure from domestic liberalization and from international trade rules that increasingly cover agriculture. Where reforms have been widespread and successful, marketing boards have vanished or retreated to providing public goods, such as strategic grain reserves or insurance against extraordinary price fluctuations. Where reforms have been less successful, the weaknesses of private agricultural marketing channels have been revealed by the rollback of marketing boards, often leading to calls for reinstatement of powerful marketing boards.

Abstract:
The objective of this paper is to frame the key issues and summarize the current state of knowledge about and innovations in index-based risk transfer products (IBRTPs) as they relate to the management of climate risk for poverty reduction, especially of chronic or persistent poverty. In the past several years, interest in and experimentation with weather index insurance and other IBRTPs has grown rapidly. Though no one should expect that these innovations alone can solve the problem of chronic poverty, index-based financing opens up a range of intriguing possibilities.

The remainder of this paper is comprised of five major sections that discuss:
1) how weather risks and climate shocks impact the poor in developing countries;
2) the concept of poverty traps, highlighting how conventional risk management strategies typically do not work well for managing covariate weather risk;
3) the limitations and opportunities of financial innovations using index-based risk transfer products (IBRTPs) for reducing or transferring weather risks and climate shocks;
4) a poverty traps-based typology of IBRTPs;
5) key remaining challenges in developing and implementing index-based risk financing for use in the global struggle to end chronic poverty.

Abstract:
Both the research and policymaking communities have shown considerable interest in identifying mechanisms that might improve the targeting of transfers to needy beneficiaries. Self-targeting mechanisms such as food for work have attracted particular attention because of their purported ability to induce self-selection out of the pool by the relatively well-off, thereby enabling concentration of transfer resources on the neediest subpopulations with minimum expenditure on administration. This paper calls attention to an important oversight in the existing literature on self-targeting: its dependence on households facing a parametric wage. Since imperfect factor markets plague many of the settings, such as rural Ethiopia, in which FFW is widely used, this oversight matters. Using a unique data set in which rural Ethiopian households declared reservation wage rates for FFW participation, we find significant errors of both exclusion and inclusion in any public works employment scheme. These errors appear perfectly consistent with a simple structural model that allows for household-specific valuation of labor as a function of relative factor endowments and human capital characteristics, with an added premium for public project participation that depends on one's history of past participation.

Abstract:
We argue that two problems weaken the claims of those who link corruption and the exploitation of natural resources. The first is conceptual. Studies that use national level indicators of corruption fail to note that corruption comes in many forms, at multiple levels, and may or may not affect resource use. Without a clear causal model of the mechanism by which corruption affects resources, one should treat with caution any estimated relationship between corruption and the state of natural resources. The second problem is methodological: Simple models linking corruption measures and natural resource use typically do not account for other important causes and control variables pivotal to the relationship between humans and natural resources. By way of illustration of these two general concerns, we demonstrate that the findings of a well known recent study that posits a link between corruption and decreases in forests, elephants, and rhinoceros are fragile to simple conceptual and methodological refinements.

Conservation policy, governance, corruption, elephants, forests, politics, environmental policy, biodiversity

Abstract:
Understanding and alleviating poverty in Africa continues to receive considerable attention by a range of diverse actors, including politicians, international celebrities, academics, activists, and practitioners. Despite the onslaught of interest, there surprisingly is little agreement on what constitutes poverty in rural Africa, how it should be assessed, and what should be done to alleviate it. Based on data from an interdisciplinary study of pastoralism in northern Kenya, this article examines issues of poverty among one of the continents most vulnerable groups, pastoralists, and challenges the application of such orthodox proxies as incomes/expenditures, geographic remoteness, and market integration. It argues that current poverty debates homogenize the concept of pastoralist by failing to acknowledge the diverse livelihoods and wealth differentiation that fall under the term. The article concludes that what is not needed is another development label (stereotype) that equates pastoralism with poverty, thereby empowering outside interests to transform rather than strengthen pastoral livelihoods.

Abstract:
Smallholder agricultural production depends heavily on environmental production conditions that are largely exogenously determined. Yet few data sets collect necessary, detailed information on environmental production conditions. This oversight raises the spectre of likely omitted variables bias because farmers' input choices typically respond in part to environmental conditions. Moreover, because environmental production conditions are rarely symmetrically distributed, the omission also generally leads to upward bias in estimated technical inefficiency and to biased estimates of the correlates of estimated technical inefficiency as well. Using panel data from 464 traditional rice plots in Cote d'Ivoire, we show that controlling for heterogeneous environmental production conditions significantly changes inferences, perhaps especially with respect to smallholder rice farmers' estimated technical inefficiency.

Production frontiers, agricultural productivity, rice, Africa (Sub-Saharan)

Abstract:
Smallholder agricultural production depends heavily on environmental production conditions that are largely exogenously determined. Yet few data sets collect necessary, detailed information on environmental production conditions. This oversight raises the spectre of likely omitted variables bias because farmers' input choices typically respond in part to environmental conditions. Moreover, because environmental production conditions are rarely symmetrically distributed, the omission also generally leads to upward bias in estimated technical inefficiency and to biased estimates of the correlates of estimated technical inefficiency as well. Using panel data from 464 traditional rice plots in Cote d'Ivoire, we show that controlling for heterogeneous environmental production conditions significantly changes inferences, perhaps especially with respect to smallholder rice farmers' estimated technical inefficiency.

Production frontiers, agricultural productivity, rice, Africa (Sub-Saharan)

Abstract:
Ecotourism, bioprospecting and non-timber product marketing have been promoted recently as market-based instruments for environment protection, but without sound understanding of the resulting net conservation effects. We present evidence on the local conservation effects of recent argan oil commercialization in Morocco, which seems a promising case study in conservation through resource commercialization. Our empirical analysis shows, however, that resource commercialization is not creating strong net conservation incentives because assumptions implicit in the prevailing logic prove incorrect in this case. Generally, the experience of southwestern Morocco provides a cautionary tale about the assumed efficacy of conservation strategies founded on resource commercialization.

Abstract:
This paper attempts to build on that framework to develop practical tools for field decision makers, although these decision tools are related specifically to the question of a food access shortfall at the household level, which may be related to a food availability shortfall at market, regional or national level.

Abstract:
This paper tests the targeting efficacy of multilateral food aid at the level of nation states, exploring whether it stabilizes food availability in recipient economies, flows most to those with the greatest need, or both. We find that, unlike bilateral flows from the United States under PL 480, multilateral food aid distribution by the World Food Programme flows countercyclically, thereby stabilizing food availability in recipient economies. WFP flows also exhibit significant progressivity at the regional level, helping to resolve international inequalities in food availability per capita.

Abstract:
Pastoralists in East Africa's arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) regularly confront climatic shocks triggering massive herd die-offs and loss of scarce wealth. On the surface, it appears puzzling that pastoralists do not make extensive use of livestock markets to offload animals when climatic shocks temporarily reduce the carrying capacity of local rangelands, and then use markets to restock their herds when local conditions recover. In recent years, donors and policy makers have begun to hypothesize that investments in livestock marketing systems might quickly pay for themselves through reduced demand for relief aid, by increasing pastoralist marketing responsiveness to temporal variation in range conditions.

Abstract:
That farmers rely on the land for their livelihoods is obvious. The converse, that ecosystem services depend on farmers' behaviors, must also be recognized if agricultural productivity is to be improved. In sub Saharan Africa, the 70% of the population employed in the agricultural sector (Sanchez 2002) is engaged in an on-going 'dialogue' with the agricultural natural resource base. Recently, this conversation has not been going well: per capita food production has remained stagnant for the last 40 years so now 180 million on the continent lack adequate food, a number that has increased by 100% since 1970 (Sanchez 2002). To provide adequate diets to the African population, increases in crop yields of 3.0 to 3.5% y-1 are needed (Reardon et al. 2001), but such increases have not been realized as average maize yields have remained static at 1200 kg ha-1.

Abstract:
This paper introduces a simple, intuitive method of producer price risk decomposition. Applied to a rich set of transactions-level data from livestock markets in northern Kenya, the statistical results prove quite consistent with qualitative descriptions of the functioning of these markets. Large and variable inter-market basis is the single most important factor in explaining producer price risk in animals typically traded between markets. Local market conditions explain most price risk in other markets, in which traded animals rarely exit the region. Seasonality accounts for relatively little price risk faced by pastoralists in the dry lands of northern Kenya. The practical policy implication of these findings is that high, volatile costs of spatial arbitrage and intertemporally inconsistent competitiveness within and between markets appear the main source of the livestock price volatility that concerns poor pastoralist populations in the northern rangelands. It seems unlikely that one can effectively mitigate the problem of extraordinary livestock producer price risk in northern Kenya without directly improving inter-market arbitrage, whether through efforts to reduce and stabilize transport costs, to improve physical security, or to stimulate new entry into the sub-sector.

Abstract:
Anniversaries are a time for celebration and reflection. July 10 marks the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower's signing of U.S. Public Law 480, the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, commonly known as PL480. Global food aid programs, the largest of which is PL480, have brought together governments, businesses, multilateral institutions such as the World Food Programme (WFP), and American private voluntary organizations (PVOs) in a valuable public-private partnership intended to reduce hunger and suffering around the world. Over the past half century, PL480 programs alone have contributed more than 340 million metric tons of food aid to save and improve the lives of many hundreds of millions of poor and hungry people around the world.

Abstract:
It is often difficult to determine the extent to which observed output gains are due to a new technology itself, rather than to the skill of the farmer or the quality of the plot on which the new technology is tried. This attribution problem becomes especially important when technologies are not embodied in purchased inputs but result instead from changed farmer cultivation practices. We introduce a method for properly attributing observed productivity and risk changes among new production methods, farmers and plots by controlling for farmer and plot heterogeneity using differential production and yield risk functions. Results from Madagascar show that the new system of rice intensification (SRI) is indeed a superior technology. Although most observed productivity gains appear due to farmer aptitude, the technology alone generates estimated average output gains of more than 37 percent. These findings also help resolve several outstanding puzzles associated with observed low and incomplete uptake and high rates of disadoption of SRI in spite of the technology's manifest superiority.

Abstract:
This paper demonstrates that there are potentially large returns to social protection policy that stakes out a productive safety net below the vulnerable and keeps them from slipping into a poverty trap. Much of the value of the productive safety net comes from mitigating the ex ante effects of risk and crowding in additional investment. The analysis also explores the implications of different mechanisms of targeting social protection transfers. In the presence of poverty traps, modestly regressive targeting based on critical asset thresholds may have better long-run poverty reduction effects than traditional needs-based targeting.

Poverty traps, Targeting transfers, Dynamic modeling

Abstract:
This paper develops an integrated model of the food aid distribution chain, from donor appropriations through operational agency programming decisions to household consumption choices. We use this model to simulate alternative policies and to perform sensitivity analysis to establish how varying underlying conditions - e.g., delivery costs, the political additionality of food, targeting efficacy - affect optimal food aid policy for improving the well-being of food insecure households. We find that improved targeting by operational agencies is crucial to advancing food security objectives. At the donor level, the key policy variable under most model parameterizations is ocean freight costs associated with cargo preference restrictions on US food aid.

cargo preference, local and regional purchases, monetization, targeting, tying

Abstract:
We present a simple two-period, dual-economy model in which migration options may affect the informal financing of educational investments. When credit contracts are universally available and perfectly enforceable, spatially varied returns to human capital have no effect on educational investment patterns. But when financial markets are incomplete and informal mechanisms with imperfect contract enforcement must fill the breach, attributes that affect the returns to education will affect educational lending and, consequently, educational attainment. Migration options can increase the returns to education, but can also choke off the informal finance on which poorer rural households may depend for long-term, lumpy investments like children's education.

Abstract:
This paper presents a simple two-period, dual economy model in which migration options may affect the informal financing of educational investments. When credit contracts are universally available and perfectly enforceable, spatially varied returns to human capital have no effect on educational investment patterns. But when financial markets are incomplete and informal mechanisms subject to imperfect contract enforcement must fill the breach, spatial inequality in infrastructure or other attributes that affect the returns to education create spatial differentiation in educational lending and consequently, in educational attainment. Although migration options can increase the returns to education, they can also choke off the informal finance on which poorer rural households depend for long-term, lumpy investments like children's education.

Poverty traps, Informal finance, Education, Rural-Urban migration

Abstract:
This paper uses detailed, transactions-level data and an innovative, structural heteroskedasticity-in-mean estimation method to identify the determinants of livestock producer prices for pastoralists in the drylands of northern Kenya. The empirical results confirm the importance of animal characteristics, periodic events that predictably shift local demand or supply, and especially rainfall on the prices pastoralists receive for animals. Price risk premia are consistently negative in these livestock markets. The imposition of quarantines has a sharp negative effect on expected producer prices in the pastoral areas, revealing that Kenya's approach to animal disease control favors wealthier highlands ranchers and consumers at the expense of poorer drylands herders.

Abstract:
Recent empirical work finds evidence of highly nonlinear wealth dynamics among the Boran pastoralists of southern Ethiopia, consistent with the hypothesis of poverty traps. We ask two critical, logically subsequent questions: (1) Do Boran pastoralists understand these dynamics? (2) If they do, what are the consequences for informal interhousehold transfers arrangements (gifts and loans of cattle)? We address these questions using original primary data collected among the same population to establish (i) pastoralists' expectations of herd dynamics and (ii) the structure of social transfers networks. Our results suggest that Borana pastoralists perceive the nonlinear dynamics that characterize livestock wealth in the region and that these result from adverse weather shocks affecting primarily households of intermediate herding ability, underscoring the criticality of methods for protecting assets in the face of unanticipated shocks. This has consequences on the design of transfer arrangements. In particular, we find that transfers of cattle respond to recipients' cattle losses, but only so long as he does not fall too far below the critical asset threshold at which herd dynamics bifurcate. Those who are persistently poor or who become destitute disappear from social networks and do not receive transfers in response to shocks. The resulting social transfers networks are highly asymmetric. These results suggest that asset transfers through social networks are better conceptualized as part of a safety net (with the objective of not letting a household falling into an asset poverty trap) than as informal mutual insurance (with the objective of providing proportional compensation for losses).

Abstract:
This paper illustrates how weather derivatives indexed to forecasts of famine can be designed and used by operational agencies and donors to facilitate timely and reliable financing for effective emergency response to climate-based, slow-onset disasters such as drought. We provide a general framework for derivative contracts, especially in the context of index insurance and famine catastrophe bonds, and show how they can be used to complement existing tools and facilities in drought risk financing through a risk layering strategy. We use the case of arid lands of northern Kenya, where rainfall proves a strong predictor of widespread and severe child wasting, to provide a simple empirical illustration of the potential contract designs.

Covariate risk, weather derivatives, catastrophe bond, famine relief, food aid, food insecurity, pastoralists, Kenya

Abstract:
In this collection, I can therefore really only scratch the surface. My objective in this collection and especially in this introductory essay is therefore not to be comprehensive, nor to go deep into the details of the many fascinating threads that jointly make up the rich fabric of development economics. Rather, the aim is to introduce the broad themes of development economics, to familiarize the reader with central issues and seminal findings that have guided the field's evolution of the past half century or so, and to flag a number of key additional readings for those who wish to plumb particular sub-topics in greater depth.

Abstract:
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 expectations in response to forecast information and find that they indeed do, albeit with a systematic bias towards optimism. In their systematic optimism, these pastoralists are remarkably like Wall Street's financial analysts and stockbrokers. If climate forecasts have limited value to these pastoralists, it is due to the flexibility of their livelihood rather than an inability to process forecast information.

Abstract:
This study investigates variation over time, space and household and individual characteristics in how people perceive different risks. Using original data from the arid and semi-arid lands of east Africa, we explore which risks concern individuals and how they assess their relative level of concern about these identified risks. Because these assessments were gathered for multiple time periods, sites, households and individuals within households, we are able to identify the degree to which risk perceptions vary across time, across communities, across households within a community, and across individuals within a household. We find the primary determinants of risk rankings to be changing community level variables over time, with household specific and individual specific variables exhibiting much less influence. This suggests that community based planning and monitoring of development efforts that address risk exposure should be prioritized. We also find that individuals throughout this area are most concerned about food security overall, so that development efforts that directly address this problem should be given the highest priority.

Risk ranking, risk perceptions, intrahousehold, Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia

Abstract:
The current global agreement governing food aid - the Food Aid Convention (FAC) - has been subject to annual renewals since it expired in 2002. Critics have pointed to some serious limitations, but negotiations over a new FAC have become entangled in U.S.-European agricultural trade disputes. Other issues in renegotiation include the patchwork quilt of food aid governance, in which the FAC's mandate overlaps with those of several other institutions; inadequate transparency; the nature of commitments - whether to express them in tonnage, value, or nutritional terms; the level of commitments and their distribution among donors; monitoring and enforcement of commitments; stakeholder representation on the FAC governing body; and the Convention's institutional "home." Also problematic is whether the FAC should have an "instrument focus" - "food aid" or a "problem focus," such as "food security."

Abstract:
This paper explores the role social network capital might play in facilitating poor agents' escape from poverty traps. We model and simulate endogenous network formation among households heterogeneously endowed with both traditional and social network capital who make investment and technology choices over time in the absence of financial markets and faced with multiple production technologies featuring different fixed costs and returns. We show that social network capital can serve as either a complement to or a substitute for productive assets in facilitating some poor households' escape from poverty. However, the voluntary nature of costly social network formation also creates both involuntary and voluntary exclusionary mechanisms that impede some poor households' exit from poverty. Through numerical simulation, we show that the ameliorative potential of social networks therefore depends fundamentally on broader socioeconomic conditions, including the underlying wealth distribution in the economy, that determine the feasibility of social interactions and the net intertemporal benefits of social network formation. In some settings, targeted public transfers to the poor can crowd-in private resources by inducing new social links that the poor can exploit to escape from poverty.

social network capital, endogenous network formation, poverty traps, multiple equilibria, social isolation, social exclusion, crowding-in transfer

Abstract:
Much of the empirical analysis of social networks is based on a sample of individuals, rather than a sample of matches between pairs of individuals. This paper asks whether that approach is useful when one wants to understand the determinants of variables that are inherently dyadic, such as relationships. After reviewing the shortcomings of the data used in the literature, we use Monte Carlo simulation to show that the answer is positive only when relationships are themselves randomly formed, a very special and uninteresting case. Additional work that supports strategies to collect dyadic data as part of surveys usually used by economists seems to be needed.

Abstract:
In this paper, we use an unusually rich data set from Ghana to explore the endogenous formation of information network linkages among farmers. We propose and test a new measure of social distance that accommodates possible asymmetries in social distance. Using this improved measure, we show that social distance plays a major role in shaping network structure, but that other factors related to the inherent costs and benefits of linkage matter significantly as well. Network interlinkages appear relatively modest. We are also able to corroborate the sociological "strength of weak ties" hypothesis.

Agricultural production, identity, markets, social networks

Abstract:
Public transfers of food aid are intended largely to support vulnerable populations in times of stress. We use high frequency panel data among Ethiopian and Kenyan pastoralists to test the efficacy of food aid targeting under three different targeting modalities, food aid's responsiveness to different types of shocks, and its relationship to private transfers. We find that self-targeting food-for-work or indicator-targeted free food distribution more effectively reach the poor than does food aid distributed according to community-based targeting. Food aid flows do not respond significantly to either covariate, community-level income or asset shocks, nor to idiosyncratic, household-level income or asset shocks. Rather, food aid flows appear to respond mainly to more readily observable rainfall measures. Finally, food aid does not appear to affect private transfers in any meaningful way, either by crowding out private gifts to recipient households nor by stimulating increased gifts by food aid recipients.

drought, crowding out, pass through, safety nets, social insurance, targeting

Abstract:
This paper explores the consequences of nonlinear wealth dynamics on the formation of informal insurance networks. Building on recent empirical work among a poor population that finds evidence consistent with the hypothesis of poverty traps, and using original primary data on social networks and transfers, we find that asset transfers respond to recipients' losses, but only so long as the recipients are not "too poor". The persistently poor are excluded from social networks and do not receive transfers in response to shocks. We also find some evidence that the threshold at which wealth dynamics bifurcate may serve as a focal point at which transfers are concentrated. Our results suggest that, in the context of poverty traps, asset transfers may aim to insure the permanent component of income generation, rather than the transitory component, as standard insurance models assume.

risk, informal insurance, social networks, poverty traps, Ethiopia

Abstract:
Poverty traps and resource degradation in the rural tropics appear to have multiple and complex, but similar, causes. Market imperfections, imperfect learning, bounded rationality, spillovers, coordination failures and economically dysfunctional institutions all play a role, to varying degrees in different places and times. Pinning down these mechanisms empirically remains a challenge, however, but one essential to the design of appropriate interventions for reducing poverty and environmental degradation in areas where livelihoods depend heavily on natural resources.

development, feedback effects, multiple equilibria, resilience, stability

Abstract:
This paper uses a new market analysis methodology to examine price and trade relationships in eight Pacific Rim factor and product markets central to the Canadian and U.S. pork industries. The new method enables direct estimation of the frequency with which a variety of market conditions occur, including competitive equilibrium, tradability, and segmented equilibrium. While extraordinary profit opportunities emerge episodically in a few niche markets, the vast majority of the markets studied are highly competitive ? exhibiting zero marginal profits to spatial arbitrage at monthly frequency ? and internationally contestable. In spite of continued high international transfer costs, the Pacific Rim is effectively a single market for pork producers and processors today.

Abstract:
The inverse productivity-size relationship is one of the oldest puzzles in development economics. Two conventional explanations for the inverse relationship have emerged in the literature: (i) factor market imperfections that cause cross-sectional variation in household-specific shadow prices and thereby induce variation in input application rates; and (ii) the omission of soil quality measurements that are inversely correlated with farm or plot size but positively associated with yields. This study uniquely employs precise soil quality measurements at the plot level with multiple plots per household so as to allow testing of both conventional explanations simultaneously. Our empirical results show that, in these data, only a small portion of the inverse productivity-size relationship is explained by market imperfections and none of it seems attributable to the omission of soil quality measurements.

Inverse Relationship, Productivity, Market Failures, Soil Characteristics, Sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar

Abstract:
Risk and its consequences pose a formidable threat to poverty reduction efforts. This article reviews a plethora of community-based risk management arrangements across the developing world. These types of arrangements are garnering greater interest in light of the growing recognition of the relative prominence of household- or individual-specific idiosyncratic risk as well as the increasing shift towards community-based development funding. The article discusses potential advantages (such as targeting, cost and informational) and disadvantages (such as exclusion and inability to manage correlated risk) of these arrangements, and their implications for the design of community-based social protection programs and policies.

Abstract:
Little empirical work has quantified the transitory effects of macroeconomic shocks on farm-level production behavior. We develop a simple analytical model to explain how macroeconomic shocks might temporarily divert managerial attention, thereby affecting farm-level productivity, but perhaps to different degrees and for different durations across production units. We then successfully test hypotheses from that model using panel data bracketing massive currency devaluation in the west African nation of Cote d'Ivoire. We find a transitory increase in mean plot-level technical inefficiency among Ivorien rice producers and considerable variation in the magnitude and persistence of this effect, attributable largely to ex ante complexity of operations, and the educational attainment and off-farm employment status of the plot manager.

Abstract:
This paper presents evidence on the effects of two different sorts of policy shocks on observed income diversification patterns in rural Cote d'Ivoire and Kenya. Data from Cote d'Ivoire show that massive currency devaluation reduced farmer income diversification by inducing a reallocation of effort toward the production of tradable agricultural commodities. But households with poor endowments were less able to respond to attractive emerging on-farm and non-farm opportunities. Due to entry barriers to superior livelihood strategies, the benefits of exchange rate reform accrued disproportionately to households that were richer prior to devaluation. Food-for-work transfers to households in semi-arid Kenya appear to have significantly reduced the liquidity constraints faced by project participants, enabling them to pursue more lucrative livelihood strategies in non-farm activities and higher-return agricultural production patterns. FFW had no discernible effect on income diversification because the agroecology necessitates considerable diversification whether or not one participates in the food-for-work project.

Abstract:
Serious declines in agricultural soil quality in sub-Saharan Africa presently command high profile attention in development circles, with much emphasis placed on stimulating increased use of fertilizers to increase agricultural productivity and sustain soils. This paper explores whether inherent biophysical complementarities among soil nutrient stocks might limit incentives for nitrogen fertilizer application on more degraded farms. The prioritization of fertilizer interventions in contemporary poverty reduction programming in Africa is based, implicitly or explicitly, on the assumption that the marginal returns to fertilizer are high and that resolving institutional or market failures that restrict fertilizer uptake will generate big gains. Using a unique survey design and soils data from plots operated by small farmers in western Kenya, we find von Liebig-type complementarities among soil nutrients, with maize yield response to nitrogen fertilizer application that is strongly and statistically significantly S-shaped with respect to soil organic carbon stocks. On a large minority of plots, degraded soils limit the marginal productivity of fertilizer such that it becomes unprofitable at prevailing prices. This suggests that in certain cases ex ante soil conditions will matter to the return on investments in fertilizer policies.

Abstract:
This paper presents a simple two-period, dual economy model in which migration options may affect the informal financing of educational investments. When credit contracts are universally available and perfectly enforceable, spatially varied returns to human capital have no effect on educational investment patterns. But when financial markets are incomplete and informal mechanisms subject to imperfect contract enforcement must fill the breach, spatial inequality in infrastructure or other attributes that affect the returns to education create spatial differentiation in educational lending and consequently, in educational attainment. Although migration options can increase the returns to education, they can also choke off the informal finance on which poorer rural households depend for long-term, lumpy investments like children's education.

Abstract:
This paper studies the causal mechanisms behind poverty traps, building on evidence of nonlinear wealth dynamics among a poor pastoralist population, the Boran from southern Ethiopia. In particular, it explores the roles of adverse weather shocks and individual ability to cope with such shocks in conditioning wealth dynamics. Using original data, we establish pastoralists' expectations of herd dynamics and show both that pastoralists perceive the nonlinear long-term dynamics that characterize livestock wealth in the region and that this pattern results from adverse weather shocks. We estimate a stochastic herd growth frontier that yields herder-specific estimates of unobservable ability on which we then condition our simulations of wealth dynamics. We find that those with lower ability converge to a unique dynamic equilibrium at a small herd size, while those with higher ability exhibit multiple stable dynamic wealth equilibria. Our results underscore the criticality of asset protection against exogenous shocks in order to facilitate wealth accumulation and economic growth and the importance of incorporating indicators of ability in the targeting of asset transfers, as we demonstrate with simulations of alternative asset transfer designs.

ability, herd restocking, poverty traps, regression trees, shocks, subjective

Abstract:
This paper explores the roles of seasonal labor and liquidity constraints, learning, and social conformity factors in explaining the adoption of a high-yielding, low-external input rice production method in Madagascar, called the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). We present a simple, multi-period model of technology adoption, and then use a dynamic sample selection model to analyze the decisions to adopt, expand and disadopt this method. We find that seasonal liquidity constraints discourage adoption by poorer farmers despite the minimal cash outlays required, while household labor constraints limit the extent of adoption conditional on initial experimentation. Learning effects - both from one's own experience and from exposure to others with experience with the technology - exert significant influence over whether to try the method, the proportion of area planted in it, and whether to continue with it. Finally, we find strong evidence that social conformity considerations affect farmers' discrete decision over whether or not to experiment with the new technology.