We provide the first quantitative analysis to scrutinize the ample ethnographic evidence that magico-religious beliefs affect the demand for conventional healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa. We rely on the unique case of Benin, where Voodoo-adherence is freely reported, and varies greatly within...

The paper analyses the impact of agricultural technologies on the four pillars of food security for maize farmers in Tanzania. Relying on matching techniques, we use a nationally representative dataset collected over the period 2010/2011 to estimate the causal effects of using improved seeds and...

The creation of optimal land institutions attracted renewed attention in the 1990s because of its central role in the transition process in former Communist countries in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and more recently because of large-scale land investments in developing countries....

We propose a model in which parents have a subjective belief about the impact of their investment on the early skill formation of their children. This subjective belief is determined in part by locus of control (LOC), i.e., the extent to which individuals believe that their actions can influence...

Microfinance institutions, despite the presence of competition and informational asymmetries, typically offer a limited variety of contracts. Assuming price competition, we propose a simple theoretical explanation for this behavior and study its consequences in terms of strategic interaction and...

Land regulations have a major impact on economic development, especially in agrarian societies, and they continue to affect the efficiency of the rural economy when economies further develop. This paper aims to give an overview of the regulations that are present in the land market in the EU...

This study analyzes the perceptions, impacts, and rewards of farmers who adopted row planting for the production of teff as a result of being exposed to a technology promotion campaign for row planting of teff in the Oromia region of Ethiopia. Our three main findings are as follows. First,...

This is the first paper to analyze the impact of biofuels on the price transmission along the food chain. We analyze the U.S. corn sector and its vertical links with food and ethanol (energy) markets. We find that biofuels affect the price transmission elasticity in the food chain compared to a...

The indirect effects of biofuels are mostly considered negative. In this paper, we argue that there may be a positive indirect effect of biofuels on food security and poverty. Our analysis shows that the introduction of castor production for biofuel in a poor country as Ethiopia can...

Developing countries have increasingly engaged in Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) to attract foreign investors. While it is found that BITs are successful in attracting FDI, we argue that the effectiveness of BITs depends on the type of FDI. We find the effect of BITs to differ importantly...