The recent surge in food prices around the world may reverse the gains of reducing hunger and poverty in the recent years. This paper employs factor and sequential typology analysis using data for 175 countries to identify groups of countries categorized according to four measures of food...

Agricultural productivity growth is widely seen as an essential instrument of poverty reduction, food security and broader economic growth. Paradoxically, however, the agricultural sector is often neglected by African governments in what is often termed ‘urban bias’. This paper explores what...

This paper analyzes how Cambodian farmers and the government can respond to the rise of rice price. The study estimates rice production response in Cambodia using the Cambodia Socio-Economic Surveys (CSES) conducted in 2004 and 2007. The results indicate that agricultural productivity is far...

The closely interlinked food, fuel and financial crises pose a significant new challenge to the global effort to reduce poverty. In short run, the oil-biofuels nexus was clearly the driving force behind the surge in food prices, but export restrictions and panic purchases turned a tightened...

This paper presents an ex ante analysis of the private and social profitability of the introduction of Bt cotton for a major cotton producing area of northern Mozambique. Cotton is especially relevant to rural poverty reduction because smallholders often have few alternative cash earning...

This paper assesses the impact of the composition of government spending on economic growth in developing countries. We use a dynamic GMM model and a panel data set for 44 developing countries between 1980 and 2004. We find that the various types of government spending have different impact on...

Producers in industrialized countries have been inundated by ideas and information about precision agriculture (PA) and how new site-specific management (SSM) technologies will revolutionize their farm operations. Conjuring up 'Star Wars' imagery, farmers and their computerized machinery...

When evaluating the impact of a program, the effects of interventions on program outcomes must be measured against a valid counterfactual case. Constructing a valid counterfactual is especially important when experimental data is not available. Building a baseline ensuring that treatment and...

This paper's goal is to increase the understanding of the income and fiscal inequality trends in rural China. Using a comprehensive county-level panel dataset between 1993 and 2002, we describe the dynamic changes in national, regional and provincial inequality measures for income, fiscal...

Increased regional inequality has been a major concern in many emerging economies like China, India, Vietnam and Thailand. However, even a large inequality is observed within the lagging regions. The objective of this paper is to look into what are the sources of within region inequality using...