This paper uses auction theory to analyze wholesale markets for wheat in Northern India. This approach enables us not only to characterize the market in terms of buyer asymmetries, but also to detect the existence of collusion and to quantify its impact on market prices. We show that buyer...

In most developing countries, there is an active debate on the changing role of the government in mediating market outcomes. In grain markets in India, this debate assumes a renewed significance, given the excessive accumulation of food stocks in recent years. For example, the wisdom of...

Many small wholesale grain markets in India are characterized by large numbers of sellers, and a relatively small number of buyers, thereby lending the price formation process open to manipulation through collusion. Government intervention limits the extent of such manipulation by instituting...

This paper analyzes the institutions and markets that govern groundwater allocation in the sugarcane belt of Uttar Pradesh, India, using primary, plot-level data from a village which shares the typical features of this region. Electricity powers tubewell pumps, and its erratic supply translates...

Deficiencies of micronutrients such as vitamin A are widespread, expecially in Africa.Biofortified crops such as maize, bred for high levels of provitamin A might offer a solution, butthese crops are often bright orange, and African maize consumers prefer white. To estimate theconsumers interest...

Iron deficiency is a widespread nutritional problem in developing countries, causing impaired physical activity and cognitive development, as well as maternal mortality. Although food fortification and supplementation programmes have been effective in some countries, their overall success...

Hunger is acknowledged to impose a heavy burden on humankind with severe negative health consequences. Micronutrient malnutrition, or "hidden hunger", is an even more widespread problem, to which economic development and income growth alone are not expected to provide a solution any time soon....

We examine the role of gender in adoption and diffusion of orange sweet potato, a biofortified staple food crop being promoted as a strategy to increase dietary intakes of vitamin A among young children and adult women in Uganda. As an agricultural intervention with nutrition objectives,...

Vitamin A deficiency is a major health problem in Africa and in many other developing countries. Biofortified staple crops that are high in pro vitamins A and adapted to local growing environment have the potential to reduce the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency. One such example is the...

Biofortification, breeding staple food crops to be dense sources of essential micronutrients, is fast emerging as a strategy to fight micronutrient malnutrition. Large scale biofortification investments are being made in several developing countries, but until recently little rigorous evidence...