"In this paper, the authors analyze the potential economic impacts of avian influenza (AI) in West Africa, taking Nigeria as an example. They find that, depending on the size of the affected areas, the direct impact of the spread of AI along the two major migratory bird flyways would be the loss...

"Sustained, well-targeted, and effectively used investments in R&D have reaped handsome rewards from improved agricultural productivity and cheaper, higher quality foods and fibers. As we begin a new millennium, the global patterns of investments in agricultural R&D are changing in ways that may...

This thesis focuses on the developing of statistical methodology in reliability and quality engineering, and to assist the decision-makings at enterprise level, process level, and product level.In Chapter II, we propose a multi-level statistical modeling strategy to characterize data from...

"This study assesses which agricultural subsectors have the strongest capacity to drive economic growth and poverty reduction in Ethiopia, and what kind of agricultural and nonagricultural growth is needed to achieve the millennium development goal of halving the 1990 poverty rate by 2015. A...

"The overall objective of this paper is to develop an appropriate conceptual and analytical framework to better understand how prospects for growth and poverty reduction can be stimulated in rural Honduras. We employ complementary quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, driven by an...

"We examine the spatial determinants of the prevalence of poverty for small spatially defined populations in rural Malawi. Poverty prevalence was estimated using a small-area poverty estimation technique. A theoretical approach based on the risk chain conceptualization of household economic...

"Zambia is one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Almost three-quarters of the population were considered poor at the start of the 1990s, with a vast majority of these people concentrated in rural and remote areas. This extreme poverty arose in spite of Zambia's seemingly promising...

"Because the conditions for agricultural development vary considerably across space, we need to develop methods that allow us to take such variability into account when evaluating development strategies for particular crops or farming systems. This paper addresses spatially varying...

"A methodology to produce disaggregated estimates of inequality is implemented in three developing countries: Ecuador, Madagascar, and Mozambique. These inequality estimates are decomposed into progressively more disaggregated spatial units and the results in all three countries are suggestive...

"A methodology to produce disaggregated estimates of inequality is implemented in three developing countries: Ecuador, Madagascar, and Mozambique. These inequality estimates are decomposed into progressively more disaggregated spatial units and the results in all three countries are suggestive...