How successful are sanctions at targeting the economic interests of political elites in affected countries? We study the efficacy of targeting in the case of Iran, using information on the stock exchange-listed assets of two specific political entities with substantial influence over the...

Value chain development (VCD) has become a popular policy instrument to help farmers in developing countries access markets. While VCD initiated by the private sector has received much attention in the literature, there is yet little research on public-led VCD. This paper pro-vides a...

Pervasive use of poor quality seed remains an important reason for low yields throughout the developing world. We explore cost-effective ways to increase the quality of the local stock of seed tubers among a sample of Ugandan potato farmers. We do this by providing agricultural extension...

Previous studies on the value of terroir, or more generally geographical indications (GI), used hedonic techniques. We use historical data and exploit temporal and geographical variations in the introduction of wine GIs in early twentieth century France to study the impact on the price of...

This paper investigates the relationship between EU agricultural subsidies and agricultural labour productivity by estimating a conditional growth equation. We use more representative subsidy indicators and a wider coverage (panel data from 213 EU regions over the period 2004-2014) than have...

In an economy with migration, poverty changes are composed of a number of forces, including the income gains and losses realized by the various migration streams. We present a simple but powerful decomposition methodology that uses panel data to measure the contributions of different migration...

A key challenge in developing countries interested in providing early childhood development programs at scale is whether these programs can be effectively delivered through existing public service infrastructures. We present the results of a randomized experiment evaluating the effects of a...

This paper estimates firm-level mark-ups and their volatility along the agri-food value chain using the methodology of De Loecker and Warzynski (2012). We estimate mark-ups of farmers, processors, wholesalers and retailers, how they change over time, and their volatility. We use detailed...

The world's first geographical indications (GIs) were in the wine sector and focused on the delineation of the location of production, the "terroir": the Burgundy wines in the fifteenth century, the Port wines and Chianti wines in the eighteenth century, and the Champagne wines in the early...

For millennia alcoholic drinks have played an important role in food security and health (both positive and negative), but consumption patterns of beer, wine and spirits have altered substantially over the past two centuries. So too have their production technologies and industrial organization....