While there is a fast-growing policy interest in offering financial products to help rural households manage risk, the literature is still scant as to which products are the most effective. In order to inform gender targeting of rural finance policy, this paper investigates which financial...

It is widely acknowledged that unmitigated risks provide a disincentive for otherwise optimal investments in modern farm inputs. Index insurance provides a means for managing risk without the burdens of asymmetric information and high transaction costs that plague traditional indemnity-based...

Income risk is substantial for farmers in developing countries. Formal insurance markets for this risk are poorly developed, and as a result there has been an increasing trend to sell weather hedges to smallholder farmers to manage their risk. This paper analyzes the demand for rainfall-based...

We conduct a randomized controlled trial to examine the impacts of delayed premium payment on insurance uptake and the subsequent investment decisions among small-holder farmers in rural China. Our results show uptake among those with the delayed payment option is three times as high as among...

India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is the largest public works employment project in the world. Its most direct poverty reduction pathway is through boosting employment and income for the poor. How effectively this direct transfer mechanism reduces...

This paper explores the evolution of real agricultural wages, machinery use, and the relationship between farm size and productivity in Vietnam during its dramatic structural transformation over the course of the 1990s and 2000s. Using six rounds of nationally representative household survey...

Despite the reportedly rapid growth of mechanization, as well as its unique history in economic and social systems, information on the patterns of agricultural mechanization growth in Vietnam has been limited. Through an extensive review of existing literature and several rounds of nationally...

In Tajikistan, the poorest country in the Central Asia region and one of the poorest in the world, food consumption patterns remain inadequate for a significant share of the population. Undernutrition and child stunting, among other outcomes, remain prevalent. At the same time, overnutrition and...

Despite the rise of targeted input subsidy programs in Africa over the last decade, several questions remain as to whether low and variable soil fertility, frequent drought, and high fertilizer prices render fertilizer unprofitable for large subpopulations of African farmers. To examine these...

Much policy and research attention has focused on the relationship between agriculture and nutrition. We extend this analysis to the context of Nepal's decade-long civil conflict. Understanding how conflict or similar stress mitigates the agriculture-nutrition linkage is essential to developing...