Input subsidy programs carry support as instruments to increase agricultural productivity, provided they are market-smart. This requires especially proper targeting to contain the fiscal pressure, with decentralized targeting of input vouchers currently the instrument of choice. Nonetheless,...

A common behavioral assumption of micro-economic theory is that income is fungible. Using household panel data from rural China and Tanzania, this study finds however that people are more likely to spend unearned income on less basic consumption goods such as alcohol and tobacco, non-staple...

It is often assumed that transfers received from government, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), friends, and relatives help rural households to pool risk. In this article I investigate two functions of transfers in Ethiopia: risk pooling and income redistribution. Unlike most of the literature,...