Summary The new variant famine (NVF) hypothesis postulates that HIV/AIDS is eroding rural livelihoods and making agrarian communities more sensitive and less resilient to drought and other shocks. NVF has become a high profile but controversial part of the literature on HIV/AIDS and food crises,...

This study uses nationally representative household-level panel data from Malawi and Zambia to identify the determinants of subsidized maize seed and fertilizer receipt, and to estimate how input subsidies affect households’ commercial purchases of improved maize seed varieties. In both...

Summary As the experience of the 20th century has shown, implementing policies that increase agricultural productivity among smallholders is a particularly promising strategy to achieve pro-poor growth. However, history also reveals major political challenges to adopting this strategy. The paper...