impact of modern agricultural technologies on smallholder welfare evidence from tanzania and ethiopia this paper evaluates the potential impact of adoption of improved legume technologies on rural household welfare measured by consumption expenditure in rural ethiopia and tanzania the study utilizes cross sectional farm household level data collected in 2008 from a randomly selected sample of 1313 households 700 in ethiopia and 613 in tanzania the causal impact of technology adoption is estimated by utilizing endogenous switching regression this helps us estimate the true welfare effect of technology adoption by controlling for the role of selection problem on production and adoption decisions our analysis reveals that adoption of improved agricultural technologies has a significant positive impact consumption expenditure in per adult equivalent terms in rural ethiopia and tanzania this confirms the potential role of technology adoption in improving rural household welfare as higher consumption expenditure from improved technologies translate into lower poverty higher food security and greater ability to withstand risk an analysis of the determinants of adoption highlighted inadequate local supply of seed access to information and perception about the new cultivars as key constraints for technology adoption

the impact of biogas technology adoption for farm households empirical evidence from mixed crop and livestock farming systems in indonesia abstract this paper aims to study the impact of biogas technology adoption as a livestock waste technology to support mixed crop and livestock mcl farming among smallholder farmers in indonesia a cross sectional survey was conducted to collect data from 351 farm households 171 biogas adopters and 180 non adopters in the province of yogyakarta this study employed treatment effects analysis based on propensity score matching techniques to evaluate the impacts of biogas technology adoption among the farm households the results showed that the adoption of the biogas technology reduces firewood consumption of smallholder farm households in indonesia unfortunately the impact on the use of slurry for organic fertilizers and the use of gas liquid petroleum gas lpg as another household cooking energy could not be evaluated this study empirically showed that the benefits of the biogas technology had not yet been optimized at the household level which may partly explain the slow rate of biogas technology diffusion among farmers however the consumption reduction of firewood as a benefit of using biogas contributed to behavioral changes of the women in the households especially with respect to firewood collection and cooking activities

world poverty and the role of agricultural technology direct and indirect effects agricultural technology can help reduce poverty through direct and indirect effects direct effects are gains for the adopters while indirect effects are gains derived from adoption by others leading to lower food prices employment creation and growth linkage effects conceptualising and measuring these effects is highly complex yet is needed for each region if technology is to be used as an effective instrument for poverty reduction we propose a methodology for doing this in the context of computable general equilibrium modelling and apply it to archetype models for africa asia and latin america results show that the dominant effect of technology on poverty is through direct effects in africa indirect agricultural employment effects in asia and linkage effects through the rest of the economy in latin america in each case increasing the poverty reduction effect through the targeting of technology across crops and through complementary rural development programmes is also explored

the european renewable energy target for 2030 an impact assessment of the electricity sector abstract the european union set binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases ghg and the share of renewable energy re in final energy consumption by 2020 the european council agreed to continue with this strategy through to 2030 by setting a re target of 27 in addition to a ghg reduction target of 40 we provide a detailed sectoral impact assessment by analyzing the implications for the electricity sector in terms of economic costs and the regional distribution of investments and shares of electricity generated from renewable energy sources res e according to the impact analysis by the european commission the 27 re target corresponds to a res e share of 49 our model based sensitivity analysis on underlying technological and institutional assumptions shows that the cost effective res e share varies between 43 and 56 secondly we quantify the economic costs of these variants and those which would be incurred with higher shares the long term additional costs for higher res e shares would be less than 1 of total system costs the third aspect relates to the regional distribution of eu wide efforts for upscaling renewables we point out that delivering high res e shares in a cost effective manner involves considerably different efforts by the member states

biogas energy from family sized digesters in uganda critical factors and policy implications dependence on fossil energy sources is increasingly becoming unsustainable due to ecological and environmental problems and rapid depletion biogas energy could augment these conventional energy sources but despite its advantages and favourable conditions for its production biogas energy use in uganda remains low due to technical economic and socio cultural impediments based on primary data on households in central and eastern uganda and the use of logistic regression this study analyses factors affecting the adoption of biogas energy in uganda the empirical results suggest that the probability of a household adopting biogas technology increases with decreasing age of head of household increasing household income increasing number of cattle owned increasing household size male head of household and increasing cost of traditional fuels in contrast the likelihood of adoption decreases with increasing remoteness of household location and increasing household land area policy options and recommendations including educational and awareness campaigns on biogas benefits and successes the provision of financial and non financial incentives to households and establishment of an institutional framework could bolster wider biogas energy acceptance in uganda

natural resource management and household well being the case of posaf ii in nicaragua summary measuring the impact of natural resource programs is a key element in the formulation and implementation of policies designed to promote farm income while enhancing the quality of the surrounding environment in this paper we analyze the economic impact of natural resource technologies delivered by the socio environmental and forestry development program ii posaf ii in nicaragua we use cross sectional data for 1 483 households from 212 treated and control communities results obtained from propensity score matching psm ordinary least squares ols weighted least squares regression wls based on psm and instrumental variables iv regression indicate that posaf ii has had a positive impact on the total value of agricultural production of beneficiary farmers an internal rate of return analysis supports the hypothesis that increasing household income while encouraging the sustainable use of natural resources through the implementation of suitable management programs can be complementary development objectives

rural finance and agricultural technology adoption in ethiopia does the institutional design of lending organizations matter summary it has now become almost a stylized fact that sustained agricultural growth is central to rapid poverty reduction and economic development yet world poverty is largely concentrated in the agrarian societies which have the potential for agricultural productivity growth this is particularly true for sub saharan african countries where the gaps between potential and actual yields remain high minimizing this gap through the promotion of modern inputs such as fertilizer and modern seeds has been at the core of almost all development strategies in ethiopia among other initiatives the country has promoted microfinance institutions and member owned financial cooperatives to alleviate credit constraints of the smallholder farmers this paper analyzes the impacts of these institutions using household survey data and a propensity score matching technique we examine the effects that institutional financial services have on farmers adoption of agricultural technology in ethiopia the results suggest that access to institutional finance has a significant positive impact on both the adoption and extent of technology use however when impacts are disaggregated by type of financial institution and farm size heterogeneities are observed in particular financial cooperatives have a greater impact on technology adoption than microfinance institutions and the results appear to vary depending on farm size and types of inputs the paper concludes with implications for policies to promote adoption of modern agricultural inputs

benefits and challenges of electrical demand response a critical review advances in it control and forecasting capabilities have made demand response a viable and potentially attractive option to increase power system flexibility this paper presents a critical review of the literature in the field of demand response providing an overview of the benefits and challenges of demand response these benefits include the ability to balance fluctuations in renewable generation and consequently facilitate higher penetrations of renewable resources on the power system an increase in economic efficiency through the implementation of real time pricing and a reduction in generation capacity requirements nevertheless demand response is not without its challenges the key challenges for demand response centre around establishing reliable control strategies and market frameworks so that the demand response resource can be used optimally one of the greatest challenges for demand response is the lack of experience and the consequent need to employ extensive assumptions when modelling and evaluating this resource this paper concludes with an examination of these assumptions which range from assuming a fixed linear price demand relationship for price responsive demand to modelling the highly diverse distributed and uncertain demand response resource as a single centralised negative generator adopting fixed characteristics and constraints

decarbonization scenarios for the eu and mena power system considering spatial distribution and short term dynamics of renewable generation we use the multi scale power system model limes eu to explore coordinated long term expansion pathways for renewable energy re generation long distance transmission and storage capacities for the power sector of the europe and middle east north africa mena regions that lead to a low emission power system we show that ambitious emission reduction targets can be achieved at moderate costs by a nearly complete switch to re sources until 2050 if transmission and storage capacities are expanded adequately limiting transmission capacities to current levels leads to higher storage requirements higher curtailments and to an increase in temporal and spatial electricity price variations results show an escalation of electricity prices if emission reductions exceed a critical value adequate expansion of transmission and storage capacities shift this threshold from 70 to 90 emission reductions in 2050 relative to 2010

the employer size wage gap evidence for britain university of edinburgh and university of sussexfinal version received 5 may 1992 this paper presents estimates for the employer plant size wage gap for britain using anordered probit model selectivity corrected wage equations are estimated for three plant sizecategories in a comparison between plants with more than 500 workers and those with lessthan 100 a wage gap estimate of over 17 per cent is detected the wage effects of unionizationin plants with more than 500 workers is reported as insignificant in contrast to evidenceprovided by idson and feaster 1990 for the united states no evidence of non randomsorting of workers across plant size is detected

the role of agriculture in economic development visible and invisible surplus transfers the financial surplus of agriculture has been central to theories of the role of agriculture in economic development morrisson and thorbecke mt have used a constant price social accounting matrix sam framework to measure rigorously the financial surplus of agriculture and decompose the mechanisms of surplus extraction history and theory have however stressed the role of prices as an invisible transfer mechanism in addition to the visible transfers identified in the sam framework we extend the mt approach by defining and measuring the real surplus of agriculture and decomposing the mechanisms of surplus extraction between visible and invisible financial transfers using an archetype computable general equilibrium model for poor african nations we trace the generation transfer and use of an agricultural surplus created by a productivity gain in agriculture this shows that prices indeed play an overwhelmingly important role in transferring a surplus from agriculture to the benefit of the rest of

agricultural technology adoption and poverty reduction a propensity score matching analysis for rural bangladesh this study aims at shedding some light on the potential impact of agricultural technology adoption on poverty alleviation strategies it does so through an empirical investigation of the relationship between technological change of the green revolution type and wellbeing of smallholder farm households in two rural bangladeshi regions as technology adoption is not randomly assigned but there is self selection into treatment the paper tackles a methodological issue in assessing the causal effect of technology on farm household wellbeing through the non parametric p score matching analysis it pursues a targeted evaluation of whether adopting a modern seed technology causes resource poor farmers to improve their income and decrease the propensity to fall below the poverty line it finds a robust and positive effect of agricultural technology adoption on farm household wellbeing suggesting that there is a large scope for enhancing the role of agricultural technology in directly contributing to poverty alleviation 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the impact of improved maize varieties on poverty in mexico a propensity score matching approach summary this study examines the adoption of improved maize germplasm in oaxaca and chiapas in mexico it employs a propensity score matching approach to analyze the impact of the adoption of improved maize varieties on household income and poverty reduction using cross sectional data of 325 farmers from the two regions the findings reveal a robust positive and significant impact of improved maize variety adoption on farm household welfare measured by per capita expenditure and poverty reduction specifically the empirical results suggest that adoption of improved maize varieties helped raise household per capita expenditure by an average of 136 173 mexican pesos thereby reducing their probability of falling below the poverty line by roughly 19 31

the poverty impacts of improved cowpea varieties in nigeria a counterfactual analysis adoption of improved agricultural technologies has long been recognized as critical for reducing poverty through increased productivity incomes and asset accumulation using a nationally representative survey data from a sample of over 1500 households in nigeria this paper evaluates the impacts of adoption of improved cowpea varieties on income and asset poverty reduction using an endogenous switching regression model the results showed that adoption of improved cowpea varieties increased per capita household income and asset ownership by 17 and 24 percentage points respectively the results based on the observed and counterfactual income and asset distributions further showed that adoption reduced both income poverty and asset poverty by 5 percentage points the paper concludes with a discussion of the policy options for increasing adoption and impacts of improved cowpea varieties in nigeria

addressing workers rights in the textile and apparel industries consequences for the bangladesh economy summary this paper applies a cge model to analyze the effects of better addressing worker s rights in bangladesh s textile and apparel industries results show that an increased minimum wage for unskilled low and medium skilled workers has negative impacts for these workers in aggregate and also for the economy in terms of export gdp and welfare this comes from the decrease in employment however labor productivity increasing improvements in factory conditions and services to workers not only increase incomes of workers but also welfare entrepreneurs also enjoy higher incomes enabling them to pay for improving the work environment

adoption of improved wheat varieties and impacts on household food security in ethiopia this article evaluates the impact of the adoption of improved wheat varieties on food security using a recent nationally representative dataset of over 2000 farm households in ethiopia we adopted endogenous switching regression treatment effects complemented with a binary propensity score matching methodology to test robustness and reduced selection bias stemming from both observed and unobserved characteristics we expand this further with the generalized propensity score gps approach to evaluate the effects of continuous treatment on the response of the outcome variables we find a consistent result across models indicating that adoption increases food security and farm households that did adopt would also have benefited significantly had they adopted new varieties this study supports the need for vital investments in agricultural research for major food staples widely consumed by the poor and efforts to improve access to modern varieties and services policies that enhance diffusion and adoption of modern wheat varieties should be central to food security strategies in ethiopia

bridging the scales a conceptual model for coordinated expansion of renewable power generation transmission and storage abstract to analyze the challenge of large scale integration of renewables during the next decades we present a conceptual power system model that bridges the gap between long term investment allocation and short term system operation decisions it integrates dynamic investments in generation transmission and storage capacities as well as short term variability and spatial distribution of supply and demand in a single intertemporal optimization framework large scale grid topology power flow distributions and storage requirements are determined endogenously results obtained with a three region model application indicate that adequate and timely investments in transmission and storage capacities are of great importance delaying these investments which are less costly than investments in generation capacities leads to system wide indirect effects such as non optimal siting of renewable generation capacities decreasing generation shares of renewables increasing residual emissions and hence higher overall costs

the system of rice intensification and its impacts on household income and child schooling evidence from rural indonesia the yield potential of a set of improved rice management practices known as the system of rice intensification sri has attracted much attention yet we know surprisingly little about sri s socio economic impact using data from indonesia in 2009 this study assesses the impact of sri on household incomes and child schooling we find that sri generates significant estimated yield gains however because sri induces a reallocation of family labor from non farm to farm sri users enjoy no household income gains despite the increased labor demand for farming we find no evidence that sri has a child labor effect

welfare impacts of maize pigeonpea intensification in tanzania this article examines the driving forces behind farmers decisions to adopt improved pigeonpea and maize and estimates the causal impact of technology adoption on household welfare using data obtained from a random cross section sample of 613 small scale farmers in tanzania we use seemingly unrelated and recursive bivariate probit regressions to test the endogeneity and joint decision making of pigeonpea maize production a double hurdle model is used to analyze the determinants of the intensity of technology adoption conditional on overcoming seed access constraints to address the impact of adoption on welfare the article employs both propensity score matching and switching regression techniques results from bivariate probit models show that unobservable factors cause both decisions to be correlated but the finding does not support the conjecture that both decisions are made jointly overall the analysis of the determinants of adoption identifies inadequate local supply of seed access to information human capital and access to private productive asset as key constraints for pigeonpea technology adoption the causal impact estimation from both the propensity score matching and switching regression suggests that maize pigeonpea adoption has a positive and significant impact on income and consumption expenditure among sample households

poverty reduction effects of agricultural technology adoption a micro evidence from rural tanzania abstract this article evaluates the impact of adoption of improved pigeonpea technologies on consumption expenditure and poverty status using cross sectional data of 613 households from rural tanzania using multiple econometric techniques we found that adopting improved pigeonpea significantly increases consumption expenditure and reduces poverty this confirms the potential role of technology adoption in improving household welfare as higher incomes translate into lower poverty this study supports broader investment in agriculture research to address vital development challenges reaching the poor with better technologies however requires policy support for improving extension efforts access to seeds and market outlets that stimulate adoption

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

role of agricultural research in poverty reduction lessons from the asian experience abstract the poor spend much of their income on food depend primarily on labour earnings and tend to reside in marginal agricultural areas to reduce poverty agricultural research should aim to ensure adequate food supplies by developing yield increasing technologies to increase labour demand by developing labour using technologies and to develop technologies suitable for marginal areas this article seeks to identify appropriate technologies that agricultural research should generate for poverty reduction the identification is based on a review of the experience of the green revolution in rice production in asia and an assessment of the changing structure of income sources among rural households in the philippines

the impact of group based credit programs on poor households in bangladesh does the gender of participants matter this paper estimates the impact of participation by gender in the grameen bank and two other group based micro credit programs in bangladesh on labor supply schooling household expenditure and assets the empirical method uses a quasi experimental survey design to correct for the bias from unobserved individual and village level heterogeneity we find that program credit has a larger effect on the behavior of poor households in bangladesh when women are the program participants for example annual household consumption expenditure increases 18 taka for every 100 additional taka borrowed by women from these credit programs compared with 11 taka for men

agricultural trade liberalization and low income countries a general equilibrium multimarket approach integrated multimarket general equilibrium models are constructed to analyze the impact on poor cereal importers of rising world prices following oecd trade liberalization archetypes contrast african countries in which cereal imports are not competitive with domestic production africa i to african and asian countries where they are competitive results show rising food import bills and exchange rate depreciation in africa i and the opposite in the other two regions policy implications include promoting agricultural exports from africa i and promoting food crops for import substitution in the other regions food aid needed to shelter the poor during the transition period is calculated

renewable electricity generation in germany a meta analysis of mitigation scenarios german energy policy targets envision a share of electricity from renewable energy sources res e of at least 80 in 2050 how can the transformation of the german electricity sector be achieved and at what costs this paper addresses these questions by means of a meta analysis of 10 recent model based mitigation scenarios for germany it turns out that the scenarios exploit the three basic strategic options of increasing the share of res e domestic res e generation electricity demand reductions and res e imports to substantially different extents domestic res e generation increases in all scenarios particularly from onshore and offshore wind scenarios that rely heavily on reducing electricity demand require a relatively low expansion of domestic res e generation despite detailed technical analyses insights on the costs of the transformation remain limited a discussion of underlying scenario assumptions reveals that it is unclear whether i res e and system integration technology development will be as cost competitive as postulated ii implicitly assumed institutional requirements will be realized and iii relevant actors in the transformation process will be incentivized accordingly therefore future research should pursue a thorough assessment of strategic options for transforming the german electricity system that consistently integrates technologies institutions and actors

analysis of adoption and impacts of improved maize varieties in eastern zambia summary this paper analyzes the adoption and welfare impacts of improved maize varieties in eastern zambia using data obtained from a sample of over 800 farm households using both propensity score matching and endogenous switching regression models the paper shows that adoption of improved maize leads to significant gains in crop incomes consumption expenditure and food security results further show that improved maize varieties have significant poverty reducing impacts in eastern zambia the paper concludes with implications for policies to promote adoption and impacts of modern varieties in zambia

the impact of water conservation and intensification technologies empirical evidence for rice farmers in ghana this study employs the propensity score matching model to examine the impact of the adoption of water conservation and intensification technologies on farm output and income among small scale lowland rice farmers in the northern region of ghana the matching was conducted based on the mahalanobis distance combined with the propensity score balancing tests by checking the mean standardized absolute bias in the matched sample were conducted as well as a sensitivity analysis was conducted to check for hidden bias due to unobservable selection the empirical results show a positive and significant impact of the adoption of bunds technology on input demand as well as a positive but insignificant impact on output supply and net returns adopters of the dibbling technology were found to have higher output supply whereas no statistically significant difference was found between the incomes of adopters and nonadopters of dibbling seed method the results however reveal a positive and significant effect on output and net returns when the dibbling method is combined with intensified weeding the estimates were found to be relatively insensitive to hidden bias

assessment of transformation strategies for the german power sector under the uncertainty of demand development and technology availability abstract the long term energy strategy issued by the german government in 2010 and 2011 embraces a substantial reduction of co 2 emissions and high shares of renewable energy in electricity production along with energy efficiency improvements and an accelerated nuclear phase out while several studies illustrate scenarios reaching these targets there are substantial uncertainties pertaining to key assumptions particularly long term electricity demand and the large scale availability of offshore wind and carbon capture and storage ccs this paper explores conditions under which model based scenarios for the german electricity sector comply with the official targets for co 2 emission reductions and renewable shares we apply the energy system model limes d which allows for a joint optimization of generation and transmission capacities the results indicate that reducing electricity demand plays a crucial role for attaining the government s targets scenarios for which either offshore wind or ccs is not available show an even stronger need for a decreasing electricity demand to reach the targets and a different pattern of transmission capacity expansion than is the case with full technology availability hence a broad technology portfolio could in turn hedge against future power demand increases that may challenge the joint attainment of the german decarbonization and renewable energy targets