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on Development |
| By: | Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Marilign, Yalew M.; Warner, James; Ringler, Claudia |
| Abstract: | The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) weather event of 2015/16 caused severe drought conditions in northern and central Ethiopia affecting the welfare of millions of farmers in late 2015 and early 2016. Using nationally representative panel data collected in 2012 and 2016 and recent advances in the difference-indifferences literature, this paper explores the effects of the 2015/16 drought and the potential role of irrigation in reducing the adverse effects of the drought. We find that the drought caused, on average, a 37 percent reduction in net annual crop income, an 8 percent decline in area cultivated, a 3 percent decline in household dietary diversity score, and a 10 percent decline in the share of harvest sold for rainfed farmers. On the other hand, irrigating farmers affected by the drought managed to increase their daily expenditures by 72 percent of their average daily food expenditure in the pre-drought period, and maintained their net crop income, size of cultivated land, household dietary diversity, and share of harvest sold to the market. Overall, while rainfed agricultural producers suffered sharp declines in welfare, those farmers with access to irrigation maintained their economic status. The results suggest that irrigation protected farmers from the adverse effects of the 2015/16 ENSO event and given increasing climate variability in Ethiopia, the government should intensify its investment and support to irrigation development in the country. |
| Keywords: | drought; irrigation; resilience; farmers; Ethiopia; Africa; Eastern Africa |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:139780 |
| By: | Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Lambrecht, Isabel B.; Akramov, Kamiljon T.; Ergasheva, Tanzila |
| Abstract: | Nutrition-sensitive agricultural diversification continues to receive interest among developing country stakeholders as a viable option for achieving dual goals of poverty reduction and food/nutrition security improvements. Assessing the effectiveness of this strategy is also essential in countries like Tajikistan. We attempt to enrich the evidence base in this regard. We assess the linkages between household-level agricultural diversification and dietary diversity (both household- and individual-levels) using unique panel samples of households and individual women of reproductive ages in the Khatlon province. Using difference-in-difference propensity-score methods and panel fixed-effects instrumental variable regressions, we show that higher agricultural diversification together with greater overall production per worker and land at the household level leads to higher dietary diversity, particularly in areas with poor food market access. Typology analyses and crop-specific analyses suggest that vegetables, fruits, legumes/nuts/seeds, dairy products and eggs are particularly important commodities for which a farmer’s own production contributes to dietary diversity improvement. Furthermore, decomposition exercises within the subsistence farming framework suggest that nutritional returns and costs of agricultural diversification vary across households, and expected nutritional returns may be partly driving the adoption of agricultural diversification. In other words, households’ decisions to diversify agriculture may be partly driven by potential nutritional benefits associated with enhanced direct on-farm access to diverse food items rather than farm income growth alone. Our findings underscore the importance of supporting household farm diversification in Tajikistan to support improved nutrition intake, especially among those living in remote areas. In a low-income setting with limited local employment opportunities that is vulnerable to a wide range of external shocks, this will likely continue to be one of the most straightforward and realistic paths to improving household’s nutrition resilience. |
| Keywords: | dietary diversity; food security; nutrition; propensity score matching; agriculture; modelling; Tajikistan; Asia; Central Asia |
| Date: | 2024–04–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:140750 |
| By: | Assefa, Thomas; Berhane, Guush; Abate, Gashaw T.; Abay, Kibrom A. |
| Abstract: | We revisit the state of smallholder fertilizer demand and profitability in Ethiopia in the face of the recent global fuel–food–fertilizer price crisis triggered by the Russian–Ukraine war and compounded by other domestic supply shocks. We first examine farmers’ response to changes in both fertilizer and food prices by estimating price elasticity of demand. We then revisit the profitability of fertilizer by computing average value–cost ratios (AVCRs) associated with fertilizer application before and after these crises. We use three-round detailed longitudinal household survey data, covering both pre-crisis (2016 and 2019) and post-crisis (2023) production periods, focusing on three main staple crops in Ethiopia (maize, teff, and wheat). Our analysis shows that fertilizer adoption, use, and yield levels were increasing until the recent crises, but these trends seem halted by these crises. We also find relatively large fertilizer price elasticity of demand estimates, ranging between 0.4 and 1.1, which vary across crops and are substantially larger than previous estimates. We find suggestive evidence that households with smaller farm sizes are relatively more responsive to changes in fertilizer prices. We also document that farmers’ response to increases in staple crop prices is not as strong as perceived and hence appears to be statistically insignificant. Finally, we show important dynamics in the profitability of chemical fertilizer. While the AVCRs show profitable trends for most crops, the share of farmers with profitable AVCRs declined following the fertilizer price surge. Our findings offer important insights for policy focusing on mitigating the adverse effects of fertilizer price shocks. |
| Keywords: | fertilizer application; smallholders; household surveys; yield response factor; shock; Ethiopia; Africa; Eastern Africa |
| Date: | 2024–07–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:148984 |
| By: | Allen IV, James |
| Abstract: | Overlap between school and farming calendars—pervasive in agrarian settings—constrains children’s time for both activities, potentially forcing trade-offs between schooling and child labor. Using shift-share estimation, I study an exogenous shift to overlap between school and crop calendars in Malawi, weighted and aggregated by communities’ pre-policy crop shares, matched to panel data on school-aged children. From pre- to post-policy, a five-day (i.e., one school-week) increase in overlap during peak farming periods decreases children’s school advancement by 0.14 grades—one lost grade for every seven children—while only resulting in 3.9 percent fewer children working on the household-farm. Policy simulations show how adapting the school calendar to minimize overlap with peak farming periods can be an effective strategy to increase school participation. |
| Keywords: | education; child labour; households; crop production; Malawi; Africa; Eastern Africa |
| Date: | 2024–01–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:138825 |
| By: | Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; Zafar, Sarim |
| Abstract: | Over the last 20 years, a burgeoning scholarly literature has analyzed the effects of cash transfer and cash plus interventions in a wide range of contexts and using a range of empirical designs. We conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the pooled effect of any cash or cash plus intervention on livelihoods-related outcomes (consumption, income and labor supply), ultimately compiling 305 different treatment estimates from 155 treatment arms in 104 studies (and in 43 countries). Using random effects and multilevel models, our findings suggest that cash transfer programming is associated with an increase of between $1 and $2 in monthly household consumption and income per $100 in cumulative transfers, an effect that persists for a period of roughly three years (inclusive of the period of program implementation); this effect is meaningfully larger (as much as $4 larger) for cash transfer programs that also include a cash plus livelihoods intervention. There are no significant effects observed on labor force participation. We also present a range of estimates capturing the longer-term (cumulative) effects of cash transfers on consumption under alternate assumptions. |
| Keywords: | cash transfers; consumption; income; livelihoods |
| Date: | 2024–07–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:148881 |
| By: | Dominik Naeher; Virginia Ziulu |
| Abstract: | Previous research indicates that zero tillage technology offers a profitable alternative to crop residue burning, with significant potential to reduce agricultural emissions and contribute to improvements in air quality and public health. Yet, empirical evidence on the link between zero tillage adoption and residue burning remains scarce, adding to the difficulties policy makers face in this context. This study addresses this gap by integrating high-resolution satellite imagery with household survey data from India to examine the empirical relationship between zero tillage and residue burning. We compare different methods for constructing burn indicators from remote-sensing data and assess their predictive power against survey-based measures. Our findings reveal a robust negative association between zero tillage and crop residue burning, with reductions in the incidence of burning of 50% or more across both survey data and satellite-derived indicators. By providing insights into optimal geospatial data integration methods, our study also makes a methodological contribution that can inform future research and support evidence-based policy interventions for more sustainable agricultural practices. |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2510.01351 |
| By: | Selidji Caroline Tossou |
| Abstract: | In this paper, I investigate the 2017 labor market reform in Benin, which reduced firing costs and allowed firms to renew short-term contracts indefinitely. Using micro-data from the Harmonized Household Living Standards Surveys and a two-way fixed effect approach with nearby countries as the control group, I assess the reform's impact on employment, worker tenure, contract types, and wages. My empirical results reveal a 2.6 percentage point (24.5 percent) increase in formal sector employment and a 2.8 percentage point (3.2 percent) reduction in informal employment. Formal sector tenure decreased by 0.23 months for short-term contract workers, reflecting higher turnover, while long-term contract tenure increased by 0.15 months. The likelihood of securing a permanent contract rose by 23.2 percentage points (41.6 percent) in the formal sector, indicating that firms used long-term contracts to retain high-productivity workers. Wages in the formal sector increased by 33.6 USD per month on average, with workers on short-term contracts experiencing a wage increase of 19.6 USD and those on long-term contracts seeing an increase of 23.4 USD. I complement these findings with a theoretical job search model, which explains the mechanisms through which lowered firing costs affected firm hiring decisions, market tightness, and the sorting of workers across sectors. This study provides robust evidence of labor market reallocation and highlights the complex trade-offs between flexibility, employment stability, and wages in a developing country context. |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2510.03668 |
| By: | Paul, Revocatus Washington; Sharma, Dhiraj |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the welfare effects of Tanzania’s 2021 levy on mobile money transfers, a policy that sharply increased transaction costs in a country where mobile money is the primary channel for financial access and remittances. Using two waves of the Tanzania National Panel Survey (2014/15 and 2020/22) combined with high-frequency phone survey data, a triple-difference identification strategy was implemented to isolate the impact of the levy on rural and urban households before and after its introduction. The findings show that rural households—who rely more heavily on mobile money and have fewer financial alternatives—experienced a 10–18 percent decline in per capita food consumption and a significant rise in food insecurity following the levy. Robustness checks using variation in bank penetration, shock incidence, and remittance dependence support these results. |
| Date: | 2025–10–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11228 |
| By: | Leah Costlow; Rachel Gilbert; William A. Masters; Flaminia Ortenzi; Ty Beal; Ashish Deo; Widya Sutiyo; Sutamara Noor; Wendy Gonzalez |
| Abstract: | New methods for modeling least-cost diets that meet nutritional requirements for health have emerged as important tools for informing nutrition policy and programming around the world. This study develops a three-step approach using cost of healthy diet to inform targeted nutrition programming in Indonesia. We combine detailed retail prices and household survey data from Indonesia to describe how reported consumption and expenditure patterns across all levels of household income diverge from least cost healthy diets using items from nearby markets. In this analysis, we examine regional price variations, identify households with insufficient income for healthy diets, and analyze the nutrient adequacy of reported consumption patterns. We find that household food spending was sufficient to meet national dietary guidelines using the least expensive locally available items for over 98% of Indonesians, but almost all households consume substantial quantities of discretionary foods and mixed dishes while consuming too little energy from fruits, vegetables, and legumes, nuts, and seeds. Households with higher incomes have higher nutrient adequacy and are closer to meeting local dietary guidelines, but still fall short of recommendations. These findings shed new light on how actual food demand differs from least-cost healthy diets, due to factors other than affordability, such as taste, convenience, and aspirations shaped by marketing and other sociocultural influences. |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2509.20203 |
| By: | Mr. Edward R Gemayel; Asel Isakova; Vidhi Maheshwari |
| Abstract: | The Compact with Africa (CwA) is an initiative launched in 2017 under Germany’s G20 Presidency to promote private investment in Africa through creating a more attractive environment for private investment through policy reforms and improved macroeconomic and business frameworks in member countries. This paper attempts to quantify the impact of CwA membership on FDI inflows. We employ the entropy balancing methodology to improve the credibility of a causal inference between CwA membership and FDI inflows. While we could not conclusively establish causality, our analysis offers other useful insights. Inward FDI data suggests that CwA countries have experienced stronger FDI inflows on average, including during the pre-CwA years. Furthermore, these countries tend to have stronger institutions, better infrastructure and human development, which are among the key factors that help attract FDI to developing countries. Hence, continued efforts of African governments to implement structural reforms, strengthen institutions, improve infrastructure and develop human capital are vital to create an attractive FDI environment, while the CwA initiative could provide a platform for peer-to-peer learning and exchange, capacity building, policy dialogue and collaboration. |
| Keywords: | Compact with Africa; Foreign Direct Investment |
| Date: | 2025–09–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2025/189 |
| By: | Joel Ferguson; Marshall Burke; Edward Miguel; Solomon M. Hsiang |
| Abstract: | Is human-caused climate change likely to trigger enduring economic decline in modern societies? We study whether changes in violent conflict and economic growth caused by warming could interact to degrade economic opportunities and trap African countries in poverty. We provide evidence of an emerging high-conflict and low-growth "poverty trap" equilibrium in Africa and describe theoretically how such an equilibrium could result from warming. We then combine historical data on temperature, growth, and conflict with projections from a large ensemble of global climate models to evaluate the risk that warming and subsequent conflict could push African economies into a regime of sustained negative economic growth. We find that the risk of such "economic collapse" is material in a moderate-to-high emissions scenario. We estimate that in Africa, a current "high" emissions trajectory (RCP 7.0) may increase the incidence of conflict 5.1 percentage points (95% CI 0.2-13.0) and increase the share of countries with net negative GDP growth this century by 12.2 percentage points (95% CI 2.0-27.5). We calculate that roughly 82% of this additional conflict risk and 14% of projected GDP losses are due to the interacting effects between these two outcomes, underscoring the importance of accounting for their indirect effects and feedbacks. Our findings suggest an unprecedented scale of emissions mitigation, economic policy innovation or institutional investment that would be required to contain the risk of catastrophic human impacts from climate change in many African countries. |
| JEL: | E0 F0 I3 O1 O44 Q54 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34320 |