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...

We investigate the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. Using detailed longitudinal household survey data and employing a difference-in-differences approach, we find that iddir membership improves...

In recent years, microfinance institutions are seen as beacons of hope to help eradicate poverty through, among others, providing credit to poor rural households. Availability of small but repeated loans is, in the long-term, expected to impact on poverty. However, decades after the introduction...

Levels and composition of food consumption are major determinants of the nutritional wellbeing of individuals, which in turn, have important implications for health, productivity, and income. Analyzing food consumption patterns in poor countries, such as Ethiopia, is therefore pivotal to...

This paper contributes new empirical evidence and nuanced analysis on the gender difference in access to extension services and how this translates to observed differences in technology adoption and agricultural productivity. We employ a cross-sectional instrumental-variable regression method...

The opportunities and constraints facing Ethiopian agriculture are strongly influenced by conditions which vary across geographical space. These conditions include basic agricultural production potentials, access to input and output markets, and local population densities which represent both...

Rural non-farm development plays a key role in generating employment in many developing countries. Clustering is an important industrial organization in the rural non-farm sector. Based on primary surveys of both urban and rural handloom weaver clusters in Ethiopia which took place in May/June...