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 assess the impact of a large-scale social protection intervention, Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), over a 15-year period. We find that the PSNP had a positive impact on food security but inconsistent impacts on assets. There were positive impacts on fertilizer use,...

Studying the sources of growth in agricultural production, examining the extent of inefficiency, and identifying the sources of such inefficiency, is an important step forward to improve the livelihood of subsistence farm households in developing countries. A stochastic frontier analysis is used...

In Ethiopia, as in many other African countries, there is a pressing need to improve household food security. An emerging consensus suggests that this is most easily accomplished through two development strategies with two complementary dimensions: investments that facilitate income generation...

"This paper assesses the impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP), the largest social protection program in Sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa. Using Propensity Score Matching techniques, we find that the program has little impact on participants on average, due in...

This paper assesses the targeting performance of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP) – a large scale social safety net program that reaches more than one million rural Ethiopian households. Most beneficiary households do public works while a small proportion receive...

We investigate the impact of participation in the Public Works component of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program, the largest social protection program in Sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa, on schooling and child labor. Income from Public Works should reduce demand for child labor...

We assess the impact of a large-scale social protection intervention, Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), over a 15-year period. We find that the PSNP had a positive impact on food security but inconsistent impacts on assets. There were positive impacts on fertilizer use,...

This paper assesses the impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP), the largest social protection program in sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa. Using Propensity Score Matching techniques, we find that the programme has little impact on participants on average, due in...

Regression discontinuity design (RDD) is a useful tool for evaluating programs when a single variable is used to determine program eligibility. RDD has also been used to evaluate programs when eligibility is based on multiple variables that have been aggregated into a single index using...