Aid agencies often provide transfers in food rather than cash out of a paternalistic belief that food transfers will better improve household food security. However, evidence from Latin America shows that cash transfers often increase the share of food in consumption, counter to Engel’s Law....

We estimate the impact of Malawi’s Farm Input Subsidy Program using an economywide approach. We find potentially substantial net benefits with indirect benefits accounting for about two-fifths of total benefits. Due to these indirect benefits, the cutoff at which lower fertilizer yield...

China, a country developing at unprecedented levels, has experienced drastic changes throughout its recent economic history. Of primary interest is the continuing development and improvement of the rural agricultural sector, with even the slightest changes in this sector having dramatic ripple...

Land fragmentation, also known as scattered land holdings, is a common phenomenon in agriculture around the world. In some cases, it has even persisted through government-supported land consolidation programs that aim to improve agricultural productivity. This study evaluates the effect of land...

While the role of risks in technology adoption is a classical topic, its effects beyond adoption have not been examined well enough despite that dis-adoption of a technology is also common. This paper examines the role of risk preferences and an exogenous shock on the survival of farmers for a...

Many markets include communication forums (e.g. Angie's List for services, Yelp for restaurants) to facilitate trading between buyers and sellers. Some market-makers go beyond creating forums and make investments to improve the quality of communication platforms, such as by recruiting...

How can food safety be provided in the absence of regulatory enforcement? What can explain heterogeneous responses to unenforced regulation across firms when certain food safety characteristics are unobservable to the consumer? Using data from over 900 maize flour samples representing 23...