Agriculture is at the core of the livelihoods of a large share of rural households throughout the developing world. Agricultural growth is a major engine for overall economic growth and possibly the single most important pathway out of poverty in the rural space. This paper characterizes...

This paper uses a newly constructed cross country database composed of comparable variables and aggregates from household surveys to examine the full range of income generating activities carried out by rural households in order to determine: 1) the relative importance of the gamut of income...

The governance of food markets is a crucial element for efficiency and distributional effects. In this paper, we use a conceptual model to show that this governance itself is endogenous in an environment of weak contract enforcement and imperfect markets, and importantly depends on the value in...

The debate on trade and poverty is reinforced by recent studies on the role of standards. It is argued that increasing standards act as trade barriers for developing countries and cause further marginalization of the poor. This paper is the first to quantify income and poverty effects of such...