This paper assesses the relation between access to markets and cultivated land in Sub-Saharan Africa. Making use of a geo-referenced panel over three decades (1970-2005) during which the road network was significantly improved, the analysis finds a modest but significant positive association...

Improving the productivity of smallholder farms in Sub-Saharan Africa offers the best chance to reduce poverty among this generation of rural poor, by building on the limited resources farming households already possess. It is also the best and shortest path to meet rising food needs. Using...

Participatory community development programs are designed to match government investments with local needs. In Morocco, where issues of inequality and poverty are high on the national agenda, a community development program, the National Initiative for Human Development, targeted high-poverty...

Accelerating development in Sub-Saharan Africa will require massive expansion of access to electricity -- currently reaching only about one-third of households. This paper explores how essential economic development might be reconciled with the need to keep carbon emissions in check. The authors...

evaluation that aims to measure the causal impact of a large-scale rural water supply and services program (PROSASR) in Nicaragua. The overall objective of the evaluation is to assess the causal impact of the provision of technical assistance packages on improvements in the functionality and...

This paper examines the relationship between caste and gender inequality in three states in India. When households are grouped using conventional, government-defined categories of caste the paper finds patterns that are consistent with existing literature: lower-caste women are more likely to...

This study examines the major constraints of rural business entry and performance in Yemen. The Yemen rural investment climate survey made it possible to analyze rural investment climate constraints for rural businesses. The survey was used to investigate both farm and nonfarm rural enterprises....

The Boserup-Ruthenberg framework has long been used to explain and understand the determinants of agricultural growth, the nature of the intensification of farming systems, investment, and technology adoption. The literature has produced an extensive body of evidence that summarizes or tests the...

After the tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia, the recovery of fishing was limited while non-fishing sectors temporarily expanded. This paper shows that fishermen's ex-post labor supply responses continued to be constrained by the provision of low quality production assets. The average fishing...

In response to the problems of high coordination costs among the poor, efforts are underway in many countries to organize the poor through "self-help groups" (SHGs) -- membership-based organizations that aim to promote social cohesion through a mixture of education, access to finance, and...