learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

realizing the gains from trade export crops marketing costs and poverty this paper explores the role of export costs in the process of poverty reduction in rural africa the authors claim that the marketing costs that emerge when the commercialization of export crops requires intermediaries can lead to lower participation into export cropping and thus to higher poverty they test the model using data from the uganda national household survey the findings show that i farmers living in villages with fewer outlets for sales of agricultural exports are likely to be poorer than farmers residing in marketendowed villages ii market availability leads to increased household participation in export cropping coffee tea cotton fruits and iii households engaged in export cropping are less likely to be poor than subsistence based households the authors conclude that the availability of markets for agricultural export crops helps realize the gains from trade this result uncovers the role of complementary factors that provide market access and reduce marketing costs as key building blocks in the link between the gains from export opportunities and the poor

women as policy makers evidence from a randomized policy experiment in india this paper uses political reservations for women in india to study the impact of women s leadership on policy decisions since the mid 1990 s one third of village council head positions in india have been randomly reserved for a woman in these councils only women could be elected to the position of head village councils are responsible for the provision of many local public goods in rural areas using a dataset we collected on 265 village councils in west bengal and rajasthan we compare the type of public goods provided in reserved and unreserved village councils we show that the reservation of a council seat affects the types of public goods provided specifically leaders invest more in infrastructure that is directly relevant to the needs of their own genders

partial vertical integration risk shifting and product rejection in the high value export supply chain the ghana pineapple sector summary high value export supply chains hold potential to improve smallholders welfare but their relative production inefficiency and moral hazard problems can cause exporters to prefer vertically integrated plantation production however pineapple exporters in ghana produce both for their own account and purchase from smallholders we hypothesize that vertical integration is only partial because exporters face large market risks that smallholders surprisingly are better able to absorb we show empirically that exporters average rejection rate of export quality fruit is high and varies in response to unanticipated fluctuations in european demand these results support the hypothesis and are consistent with theories of partial vertical integration but not the standard principal agent paradigm

structural gaiatsu international finance and political change in japan argues that the principal contributor to changes in japan s political economy is the decline of japanese governmental control over capital flows and foreign exchange rates brought about by structural gaiatsu or direct foreign pressure differs from previous analysis of gaiatsu by arguing that international capital and market forces generate gaiatsu not foreign governments and that its influence has been worldwide as well as deeper and more ongoing than bilateral negotiating sessions and joint communiques related to trade discusses how the change has catalyzed a major increase in foreign direct investment by japanese owned corporations a reduction in government s ability to control corporate behavior a diminution of intra corporate linkages conflict within national economic policies and the increased penetration of the japanese economy by foreign financial institutions describes how the change has resulted in an emerging socio economic gap in japan between individuals groups and organizations demonstrates how the japanese experience suggests the transformative power of global capital markets on national political economies particularly those that have been interventionist in nature

agrifood grades and standards in the extended mercosur their role in the changing agrifood system is among the most important in terms of trade volumes in the developing world it contains global powerhouses of agroindustry and agriculture such as brazil ranked fourth worldwide and argentina and chile among the global frontrunners in meat and cereals and fruit respectively income growth and rapid urbanization are changing diets increasing the importance of processed foods and nonstaples as bennett s law predicts the most important nonstaples dairy vegetablesfruit meat and coffee have stringent export requirements with respect to g s in organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries and mercosur domestic markets are themselves becoming more demanding in this regard the paper proceeds as follows section 2 presents definitions and theoretical hypotheses section 3 discusses policy and market determinants of changes in g s and highlights the importance of the emergence of privatized g s section 4 hypothesizes that the changes in g s are adding fuel to the forces of agrifood system concentration in the area section 5 concludes

the economic impact of agricultural extension a review the history of economic development shows that few countries have achieved sustained economic growth without first or simultaneously developing their agricultural sector in most developing countries agriculture is the most important economic activity providing income employment and foreign exchange without an efficient agricultural sector a country is severely constrained in its ability to feed itself or import foreign products for domestic consumption and development rapid technological advances in agriculture have occurred since world war ii these advances have induced great changes in agricultural production and also highlighted the importance of a rapid and efficient transfer of advanced knowledge to the farmer when farmers become aware of the availability of new technology they may have inaccurate perceptions of the related costs and benefits as information availability may be limited as farmers decisions are based on their perceptions their resource allocation and technology choice will deviate from the social optimum if perceptions do not coincide with the correct attributes of the technology both society and the farmers as individuals would gain from improved information and theoretically there should exist a market for information however information on improved agricultural technology is often a public good because the provider of the information cannot exclude other potential users from free access to information provided to one user and the value of the information is not directly affected by the number of users while many instances of market activities in various aspects of agricultural information are observed e g specialized information on pest man

dynamics of smallholder participation in horticultural export chains evidence from ecuador we study the dynamics of smallholder participation in export value chains focusing on the example of small scale broccoli producers in the highlands of ecuador combining cross sectional data from a household survey with 11 year longitudinal data on export market transactions we explain the hazards of dropping out of a high value export chain we apply a multispell cox duration model that allows us to consider multiple entries and exits from the supply chain we also provide evidence on the welfare impacts associated with participation the results suggest that small scale farmers exit from the export sector is accelerated by high transaction risks experienced in the past while we find no particular evidence for the exclusion of small scale farmers from the export sector we do find that poorer households and female headed households tend to drop out faster especially as long as the sector is still prospering finally when considering welfare effects we do not find evidence that participation translates into tangible benefits for broccoli farmers we discuss some measures that could help improve the long term sustainability of smallholder integration in high value chains

social networks and technology adoption in northern mozambique despite their potentially strong impact on poverty agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in mozambique we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters dynamic considerations however suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free ride on the information gathered by others we present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse u in line with information sharing the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others the data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context in particular social networks are precisely identified and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation

recalling extra data a replication study of finding missing markets we re examine some of the strongest evidence supporting agricultural commercialisation a highly touted yet under researched development intervention our replication study re examines ashraf gine

a test of the equality of closed ended and open ended contingent valuations a test is developed to find whether open ended and closed ended contingent valuation mechanisms lead to significantly different results the test is based on joint estimation of willingness to pay responses to open and closed ended questions asked of the same sample of individuals in a public good example individuals do respond differently depending on question format possible explanations include different incentives for strategic behavior and respondents lack of familiarity with the open ended question type no differences in willingness to pay were found in a private good example

consumer preferences for cowpea in cameroon and ghana consumer preference information is essential to targeting research this paper reports an effort of a multi disciplinary team to measure the market value of cowpea characteristics five samples were purchased once per month in seven markets in ghana and cameroon starting in september 1996 in the market price and vendor characteristics were noted in the laboratory size of grains testa color testa texture eye color and damage levels were recorded a hedonic pricing regression model was used results indicate that grain size is the most important characteristic consumers seem more sensitive to bruchid callosobruchus maculates damage than hypothesized cowpeas with white testa command a clear premium only in one of the ghanaian markets in ghana black eyes sell at a premium but in cameroon black eyes are discounted in general this study indicates that quality characteristics are very important in west african food markets even low income consumers are willing to pay a premium for products that match their preferences and they are vigilant in identifying products that do not meet their standards purchasing samples on a regular basis and hedonic pricing offers a practical way for biological scientists and economists to work together to measure these consumer preferences

a household model of on farm storage under price risk we present an agricultural household model of consumption storage savings and labor decisions and argue that food crop storage under price risk cannot be fully explained by risk taking or speculative behavior alone as the commodity storage literature suggests often and especially in the case of small farmers the explanation lies in the household s aversion to risk and in food security considerations the empirical analysis using icrisat quarterly panel data from shirapur provides evidence against risk neutral preferences we find that risk response is particularly significant in the storage and labor decisions of small farm households

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

growing their own unobservable quality and the value of self provisioning abstract many important food quality and safety attributes are unobservable at the point of sale particularly in informal markets with weak reputation effects through a framed field experiment conducted in western kenya we show that farmers place a large premium on maize they have grown themselves relative to that available for purchase providing information on the origin of maize and on its taste and safety reduces this gap we conclude that information which is unavailable during typical market transactions is important to how consumers value maize and that imperfect information may contribute to the prevalence of agricultural production for subsistence needs in developing countries

internationalization institutions and political change many analysts associate internationalization of markets with wide ranging changes in domestic politics an open polity approach shows how extant domestic institutions mediate in this relationship between internationally induced changes in domestic actors policy preferences on the one hand and national policy and institutional outcomes on the other the nature of labor unions and formal political institutions often results in political outcomes that differ significantly from those that would ensue if outcomes simply mirrored preference changes in addition while existing institutions may sometimes constrain governments from pursuing policies that would improve long term economic performance governments will often fail to change these institutions because of short term political considerations

estimating price discounts for low quality maize in sub saharan africa evidence from benin summary this article uses household data from benin to estimate the extent that markets in sub saharan africa discount damaged maize stated preference methods indicate that a 10 increase in insect damage results in a 9 maize price discount however revealed preference methods indicate that this discount is only 3 discounts are larger immediately after harvest than they are in the lean period when maize is scarce our results help explain why many smallholder farmers sell maize at harvest rather than making the effort to preserve grain of good quality for later in the season when it may fetch a higher price

treatment effect heterogeneity in theory and practice instrumental variables iv methods identify internally valid causal effects for individuals whose treatment status is manipulable by the instrument at hand inference for other populations requires homogeneity assumptions this paper outlines a theoretical framework that nests causal homogeneity assumptions these ideas are illustrated using sibling sex composition to estimate the effect of childbearing on economic and marital outcomes the application is motivated by american welfare reform the empirical results generally support the notion of reduced labour supply and increased poverty as a consequence of childbearing but evidence on the impact of childbearing on marital stability and welfare use is more tenuous

the digital provide information technology market performance and welfare in the south indian fisheries sector when information is limited or costly agents are unable to engage in optimal arbitrage excess price dispersion across markets can arise and goods may not be allocated efficiently in this setting information technologies may improve market performance and increase welfare between 1997 and 2001 mobile phone service was introduced throughout kerala a state in india with a large fishing industry using microlevel survey data we show that the adoption of mobile phones by fishermen and wholesalers was associated with a dramatic reduction in price dispersion the complete elimination of waste and near perfect adherence to the law of one price both consumer and producer welfare increased

learning by doing and learning from others human capital and technical change in agriculture household level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high yielding seed varieties hyvs associated with the green revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers the estimates indicate that i imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption ii this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased iii own experience and neighbors experience with hyvs significantly increased hyv profitability and iv farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions

household inventories and marketed surplus in semisubsistence agriculture a model of semisubsistence agriculture explicitly accounting for the ability of farm households to hold inventories of staple foods is developed comparative statics analysis highlights the potential importance of wealth effects attributable to price induced changes in the value of household inventories empirical results for three groups of households in an indian village confirm that failure to account for household inventories leads to an overstatement of the responsiveness of both consumption demand and marketed surplus

cash crop choice and income dynamics in rural areas evidence for post crisis indonesia in this article we investigate the factors affecting levels and growth of incomes in rural indonesia following the crisis of 1997 1998 in particular we investigate the relative roles of nonfarm incomes and productivity improvements achieved via changes in crops versus improvements on the same crops on income dynamics framing the article in the context of an optimal labor allocation model relying on unique household panel data from central sulawesi and using advanced panel econometric methods we find that local innovations related to the adoption and intensification of new cash crop varieties more specifically the shift from coffee to cocoa production can explain a substantial part of the observed post crisis developments causal estimates of the effect of growing cocoa suggest that households were on average able to achieve about 14 higher income levels during the post crisis period compared to the planting of other crops most notably coffee also our results demonstrate the importance of engagement in nonfarm activities for household income growth comparative analyses using a nationally representative survey suggest that similar processes are at play in other parts of indonesia

small farmers in high value chains binding or relaxing constraints to inclusive growth summary considerable empirical work relates participation in contract farming with farm profitability however causation is far from settled as few studies control for endogeneity of participation moreover the link between contract farming and equity is ambiguous as the association between contract farming and farmer endowments is mixed this case study of smallholders in the tobacco industry addresses these issues and seems to be the first such econometric application in the philippines based on a treatment effects regression contract farming increases profitability with participation biased toward smaller farm sizes supporting the positive role of contract farming toward inclusive growth in rural areas

governance and trade in fresh vegetables the impact of uk supermarkets on the african horticulture industry production of fresh vegetables for export has grown rapidly in a number of countries in sub saharan africa over the last decade this trade brings producers and exporters based in africa together with importers and retailers in europe large retailers in europe play a decisive role in structuring the production and processing of fresh vegetables exported from africa the requirements they specify for cost quality delivery product variety innovation food safety and quality systems help top determine what types of producers and processors are able to gain access to the fresh vegetables chain and the activities they must carry out the control over the fresh vegetables trade exercised by uk supermarkets has clear consequences for inclusion and exclusion of producers and exporters of differing types and for the long term prospects for the fresh vegetables industry in the two major exporting countries studied kenya and zimbabwe

internationalization and the social democratic model crisis and future prospects this article examines the crisis of the social democratic model in the four countries austria norway finland and sweden in which social democracy was most successful in maintaining and even extending its two central achievements full employment and the institutional welfare state through the end of the 1980s four major conclusions emerge from the analysis first supply side measures more so than demand management were central to the employment and growth models pursued by social democracy prior to the early 1970s second the increasing trade openness contributed little to the recent problems of social democracy by contrast financial internationalization and deregulation and the multinationalization of capital undermined important features of the supply and demand sides of the models third changes in the international and domestic economies have weakened centralized bargaining fourth governments in the three nordic countries made serious mistakes in economic policy which greatly aggravated

small farmers ngos and a walmart world welfare effects of supermarkets operating in nicaragua despite more than a decade of ngo and government activities promoting developing world farmer participation in high value agricultural markets evidence regarding the household welfare effects of such initiatives is limited this paper analyzes the geographic placement of supermarket supply chains in nicaragua between 2000 and 2008 and uses a difference in difference specification on measures of supplier and non supplier assets to estimate the welfare effects of small farmer participation though results indicate that selling to supermarkets increases household productive asset holdings they also suggest that only farmers with advantageous endowments of geography and water are likely to participate

the role of input vouchers in modernizing the fresh fruit and vegetable market in turkey contractual arrangements between farmers and traders aiming at providing input credit in return for output selling have been widely studied in the literature on agricultural economics nonetheless there is one issue which is barely mentioned in the literature how to enforce the contract terms when traders offer credit in cash rather than input advances this article aims to describe an innovation in farming contracts used by fresh fruit and vegetable wholesalers in turkey which involves a kind of private voucher system drawing on original data collected from wholesalers a segment in the supply chain hardly covered in the literature we investigate the factors determining contract adoption using a two limit tobit model our results suggest that this private voucher system contributes to supply chain coordination and facilitates smallholder farmer participation in export and supermarket channels which are growing rapidly in this developing country resume d auteur

modern value chains and the organization of agrarian production empirical studies of agrarian production in developing countries often find that small farms possess a productivity advantage over larger farms eswaran and kotwal 1986 famously derive this inverse farm size productivity relationship from the structure of agrarian production the focal prediction of their model is that in otherwise equivalent economies a more egalitarian land distribution raises both output and producer welfare the traditional spot procurement system implicit in the eswaran and kotwal model however diverges fundamentally from modern contractual procurement practices we therefore develop a new model of agrarian production in order to determine whether the introduction of a modern value chain alters the welfare effects of land redistribution the inverse farm size productivity relationship persists in our model but we find that more egalitarian land distribution leads to nonmonotonic changes in producer welfare we also find that the introduction of a modern sector can harm the laboring classes

seeing is believing evidence from an extension network experiment extension is designed to enable lab to farm technology diffusion decentralized models assume that information flows from researchers to extension workers and from extension agents to contact farmers cfs cfs should then train other farmers in their communities such a modality may fail to address informational inefficiencies and accountability issues the authors run a field experiment to measure the impact of augmenting the cf model with a direct cf training on the diffusion of a new technology all villages have cfs and access the same extension network in treatment villages cfs additionally receive a three day central training on the new technology they track information transmission through two nodes of the extension network from extension agents to cfs and from cfs to other farmers directly training cfs leads to a large statistically significant increase in adoption among cfs however higher levels of cf adoption have limited impact on the behavior of other farmers

estimation of limited dependent variable models with dummy endogenous regressors applied economists have long struggled with the question of how to accommodate binary endogenous regressors in models with binary and nonnegative outcomes i argue here that much of the difculty with limited dependent variables comes from a focus on structural parameters such as index coefcients instead of causal effects once the object of estimation is taken to be the causal effect of treatment several simple strategies are available these include conventional two stage least squares multiplicative models for conditional means linear approximation of nonlinear causal models models for distribution effects and quantile regression with an endogenous binary regressor the estimation strategies discussed in the article are illustrated by using multiple births to estimate the effect of childbearing on employment status and hours of work

ambiguity aversion decreases the impact of partial insurance evidence from african farmers indemnifying smallholder farmers against crop loss is thought to play an important role in encouraging the adoption of new technologies and facilitating productivity growth but to be infeasible due to information problems consequently there is interest in developing alternative partial insurance products examples include rainfall insurance and the limited liability inherent in credit contracts i argue that although these products may reduce information asymmetry ambiguity averse farmers struggle to assess whether the contracts reduce risk this problem is most pronounced when the production technology is ambiguous as is likely the case for new technologies i formalize this argument and test the theory using data from two rcts conducted in malawi and kenya comparative statics from the theory are consistent with both sets of data and i argue that income losses from ambiguity aversion may be substantial

heterogeneity of commercialization gains in the rural economy farmers in low income rural economies often fail to switch to cash crops from staple production despite the positive income effects of commercialization expected by policy makers the literature suggests that market failures prevent households from cash crop adoption but remains inconclusive regarding farmers motives and the effects of commercialization this article contributes to the debate by offering an original approach to the analysis of commercialization outcomes and farmers decisions it consists of applying a model with essential heterogeneity and a semiparametric estimation technique to analyzing harvest value returns to cash cropping using malawian data we show considerable heterogeneity in harvest value returns to cash cropping both within and between groups of farmers choosing different crop portfolios importantly the results imply rational choices based on comparative advantage considerations of farming households farmers self select into the activity where they expect higher gains and adopt cash crops when facing weaker market barriers

welfare effects of vegetable commercialization evidence from smallholder producers in kenya we investigate whether smallholder horticultural commercialization is able to as often stipulated reduce poverty in developing countries with the help of panel household survey data from kenya we find evidence for a positive association between vegetable commercialization and household welfare even when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity across households interestingly the effect differs depending on which market vegetables are being produced for commercialization through the export market is consistently positively associated with income but not wealth while there is some limited evidence for commercialization through the domestic market channel being positively related to welfare measured by asset holdings and income depending on the specification

is late really better than never the farmer welfare effects of pineapple adoption in ghana export agriculture offers potentially high returns to smallholder farmers in developing countries but also carries substantial market risk in this paper we examine the intertemporal welfare impact of the timing of a farmer s entry into the export pineapple market in southern ghana we examine whether farmers who never cultivated pineapple are better or worse off than farmers who decided to adopt pineapple earlier or later relative to their peers and experienced a significant adverse market shock several years prior to our endline survey we use a two stage least squares model to estimate the causal effect of duration of pineapple farming on farmer welfare consistent with economic theory we find that earlier adoption of the new crop brings greater welfare gains than does later uptake but we find that the gains to later uptake of pineapple just before the market shock are small in magnitude just 0 1 standard deviations of a comprehensive asset index indicating that the gains to adoption may be precarious and depend on the context in particular on the severity of prospective market shocks

smallholder participation in contract farming comparative evidence from five countries summary supermarkets specialized wholesalers processors and agro exporters are transforming the marketing channels into which smallholder farmers sell produce in low income economies we develop a conceptual framework with which to study contracting between smallholders and a commodity processing firm we then synthesize results from empirical studies of contract farming arrangements in five countries ghana india madagascar mozambique and nicaragua the resulting meta narrative documents patterns of participation the welfare gains associated with participation reasons for nonparticipation the significant extent of contract noncompliance and the considerable dynamism of these value chains as farmers and firms enter and exit frequently

does storage technology affect adoption of improved maize varieties in africa insights from malawi s input subsidy program abstract to date there is limited knowledge of how having access to post harvest storage technology affects a smallholder african farmer s decision to adopt higher yielding improved maize varieties this is a key issue because higher yielding varieties are known to be more susceptible to storage pests than lower yielding traditional varieties we address this question using panel data from malawi and incorporating panel estimation techniques to deal with unobserved heterogeneity our results indicate that acquiring chemical storage protectants after the previous harvest is associated with a statistically significant and modest positive impact on the probability of adopting improved maize total area planted to improved maize varieties and share of area planted to improved maize varieties in the next planting season we also find that the storage chemical subsidy is associated with significant crowding out of commercial storage chemical purchases as farmers who acquire subsidized chemicals are more than 50 percentage points less likely to purchase commercial chemicals on average these findings have implications for maize adoption and input subsidy policies and they indicate that researchers extension staff and policy makers should consider post harvest issue when promoting adoption of improved varieties

finding missing markets and a disturbing epilogue evidence from an export crop adoption and marketing intervention in kenya in much of the developing world many farmers grow crops for local or personal consumption despite export options that appear to be more profitable thus many conjecture that one or several markets are missing this paper reports on a randomized controlled trial conducted by drumnet in kenya that attempts to help farmers adopt and market export crops drumnet provides smallholder farmers with information about how to switch to export crops makes in kind loans for the purchase of the agricultural inputs and provides marketing services by facilitating the transaction with exporters the experimental evaluation design randomly assigns pre existing farmer self help groups to one of three groups 1 a treatment group that receives all drumnet services 2 a treatment group that receives all drumnet services except credit or 3 a control group after one year drumnet services led to an increase in production of export oriented crops and lower marketing costs this translated into household income gains for new adopters however one year after the study ended the exporter refused to continue buying the cash crops from the farmers because the conditions of the farms did not satisfy european export requirements drumnet collapsed in this region as farmers were forced to sell to middlemen and defaulted on their loans the risk of such events may explain at least partly why many seemingly more profitable export crops are not adopted

linking smallholder farmers to markets on extensive and intensive margins evidence from nicaragua abstract access to modern commercialization channels is key for smallholder farmers to move away from subsistence farming and overcome poverty however achieving that goal is challenging for smallholders given their lack of appropriate managerial practices production technology and infrastructure this paper examines the association between receiving trainings in two distinct entrepreneurial practices one direct at the individual and farmer association level and another indirect at the community level and commercialization in non local markets at the extensive and intensive margins we exploit a panel dataset of bean producers in nicaragua that participated in an ngo program implemented between 2007 and 2012 we find opposite results for the two market linkage activities especially on the intensive margin or volume of sales while reciving direct training on entrepreneurial practices ep is positively associated with commercialization training on municipality engagement me activities is negatively associated these correlation patterns are mainly observed among entrant farmers as opposed to those already participating in commercial markets prior to the program implementation we also find varying results for me activities by plot size and leadership position additional estimations show that training activities that are positively correlated with bean commercialization are not necessarily correlated with the commercialization of other crops and vice versa

heterogeneous impact dynamics of a rural business development program in nicaragua abstract we study the impacts of a rural development program designed to boost the income of the small farm sector in nicaragua exploiting the random assignment of treatment we find statistically and economically significant impacts on gross farm income and investment in productive farm capital using continuous treatment estimation techniques we examine the evolution of program impacts over time and find that the estimated income increase persists and that the impacts on productive capital stock continue to rise even after the program concluded additionally panel quantile methods reveal striking heterogeneity of program impacts on both income and investment we show that this heterogeneity is not random and that there appear to exist low performing household types who benefit little from the program whereas high performing upper quantile households benefit more substantially analysis using generalized random forests a machine learning algorithm points toward greater program impacts for households who were disadvantaged at baseline even after controlling for this source of heterogeneity we find large and persistent differences in how much different types of households benefited from the program while the benefit cost ratio of the program is on average positive the impact heterogeneity suggests that business development programs aiming to engage farm households as agricultural entrepreneurs have limitations as instruments to eliminate rural poverty

technological innovations downside risk and the modernization of agriculture we use a randomized experiment in india to show that improved technology enhances agricultural productivity by crowding in modern inputs and cultivation practices specifically we show that a new rice variety that reduces downside risk by providing flood tolerance has positive effects on adoption of a more labor intensive planting method area cultivated fertilizer usage and credit utilization we find that a large share of the expected gains from the technology comes from crowding in of other investments therefore improved technologies that reduce risk by protecting production in bad years have the potential to increase agricultural productivity in normal years

hedonic estimation of quality factors affecting the farm retail margin a model of the farm retail marketing margin is tested using producer and retail prices of a perishable product in which time during season and quality characteristics are variable empirical analysis verifies that the marketing margin of california fresh peaches decreases during the season and increases with improved quality results identify potential producer gains from improving product quality early in the season and from price signals compensating producers for quality characteristics other than weight

the impact of microfinance in sub saharan africa a systematic review of the evidence microfinance is seen as a key development tool and despite the current deepening crisis within the industry it continues to grow in sub saharan africa we systematically reviewed the evidence of the impacts of micro credit and micro savings on poor people in sub saharan africa we considered impacts on income savings expenditure and the accumulation of assets as well as non financial outcomes including health nutrition food security education child labor women s empowerment housing job creation and social cohesion the available evidence shows that microfinance does harm as well as good to the livelihoods of the poor

impact of third party contract enforcement in agricultural markets a field experiment in vietnam we study the effect of alleviating the information asymmetry regarding product quality that is widespread in contracts between agricultural producers and buyers in developing countries opportunistic buyers may underreport quality levels to farmers to reduce the price that they have to pay in response farmers may curb investment thereby negatively affecting farm productivity in an experiment we entitle randomly selected smallholder dairy farmers in vietnam who are contracted by a large company to independently verify milk testing results results indicate that treatment farmers use 12 more inputs and they also increase their output significantly some wider research and policy implications are discussed

invested interests the politics of national economic policies in a world of global finance capital moves more rapidly across national borders now than it has in at least fifty years and perhaps in history this article examines the effects of capital mobility on different groups in national societies and on the politics of economic policymaking it begins by emphasizing that while financial markets are highly integrated within the developed world many investments are still quite specific with respect to firm sector or location it then argues that contemporary levels of international capital mobility have a differential impact on socioeconomic groups over the long run increased capital mobility tends to favor owners of capital over other groups in the shorter run owners and workers in specific sectors in capital exporting countries bear much of the burden of adjusting to increased capital mobility these patterns can be expected to lead to political divisions about whether or not to encourage or increase international capital market integration the article then demonstrates that capital mobility also affects the politics of other economic policies most centrally it shifts debate toward the exchange rate as an intermediate or ultimate policy instrument in this context it tends to pit groups that favor exchange rate stability against groups that are more concerned about national monetary policy autonomy and therefore less concerned about exchange rate stability similarly it tends to drive a wedge between groups that favor an appreciated exchange rate and groups that favor a depreciated one these divisions have important implications for such economic policies as european monetary and currency union the dollar yen exchange rate and international macroeconomic policy coordination