This paper examines how farmers in a developing country search for information. Using data on farmers' decisions to connect with other farmers in order to ask for information about different agricultural problems, we explore the role played by identity in accessing information. We show that...

We compare the impacts across a range of criteria of local and regional procurement (LRP) relative to transoceanic shipment of food aid in Burkina Faso and Guatemala. We find that neither instrument dominates the other across all criteria in either country, although LRP commonly performs at...

Using survey data from natural experiments in three countries that simultaneously received food aid sourced locally and from the United States, we test the hypothesis that locally-sourced commodities are more culturally appropriate and thus preferred over traditional food aid commodities sourced...

Summary This study analyzes the persistence of poverty in both rural and urban areas in Ethiopia during 1994-2004. The key finding is that households move frequently in and out of poverty but the difficulty of exiting from poverty, like the chance of avoiding slipping back, increases with the...

Summary This paper uses a unique, spatially-explicit dataset to study the link between agricultural performance and rural poverty in Madagascar. We show that, controlling for geographical and physical characteristics, communes that have higher rates of adoption of improved agricultural...