Based on extensive interviews with informal importers and brokers in Cameroon, this paper explains why customs reform aimed at reducing fraud and corruption may be difficult to achieve. Informal traders and brokers (without licenses) follow various business models and practices, which are...

Based on extensive interviews with informal importers and brokers in Cameroon, this paper explains why customs reform aimed at reducing fraud and corruption may be difficult to achieve. Informal traders and brokers (without licenses) follow various business models and practices, which are...

The 2007-2008 global food crisis has renewed interest in post-harvest loss, but estimates remain scarce, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper uses self-reported measures from nationally representative household surveys in Malawi, Uganda, and Tanzania. Overall, on-farm post-harvest loss...

This paper revisits the extent of seasonality in African livelihoods, which has disappeared from Africa's development debate. Through econometric analysis of monthly food price series across 100 locations in three countries during 2000-12, it is shown that seasonal movements in maize wholesale...

Replaced with revised version of paper Jan. 11, 2012

We develop an empirical farmland allocation model based on explicit profit functions that is linked to a market demand model. The model accounts for corner solutions, enabling estimation with disaggregated data, and thereby allows treating prices as exogenous. The integrated model enables...

Over the last 10 years, Burkina Faso has experienced a reform of its cotton sector, and is now the largest African cotton producer and exporter. The cotton ”boom” consisted of a rapid expansion of cotton areas through the growth of land shares allocated to cotton (and new producers),...

The cotton economy of Burkina Faso has been characterized by a changing rural environment for farmers since late nineties, which has come with the cotton reform and the resulting cotton boost. There have been slight improvements in living standards and rural households’ income while the...

Replaced with revised version of paper Jan. 11, 2012

Like many other African countries in the 1980s, Burkina Faso was urged to engage in a far-reaching liberalization of its state-led cotton sector. Yet unlike most of its neighbors, the Burkinabè government rejected both the status quo and wholesale liberalization, and instead embarked on a more...