The dissertation examines an informal financial institution in Cameroon: the Rotating Saving and Credit Association. Its describes the operational procedures. RoSCAs are associations formed by a core of individuals who willingly and regularly contribute periodically a fixed or variable amount to...

"This study investigated the impacts of access to inventory credit, input supply shops, fertilizer microdosing demonstrations, and other factors on farmers' use of inorganic fertilizer and other inputs in Niger and on crop yields. We found that access to inventory credit and input supply shops...

In den Stadtgebieten Kameruns operieren sehr unterschiedliche informelle Spar- und Kreditvereinigungen (ROSCAs), wobei offenbar eine Beziehung zwischen dem Rückzahlungsverhalten der Kunden und den jeweiligen speziellen Strukturen der ROSCAs besteht. Einige ROSCA-Arten scheinen ein besseres...

Significant ambiguity surrounds the magnitude and sign of the effect of foreign aid on economic growth. Foreign aid can potentially augment scarce domestic capital to spur growth but foreign aid can also remove positive incentive to build wealth, stalling growth. This paper characterizes the...

This paper investigates the impact of USDA crop production reports in corn andsoybean futures markets. The analysis is based on all corn and soybean production reportsreleased over 1970-2006. The empirical analysis compares the typical OLS eventstudy approach to the new Identification by...

This paper develops a theoretically consistent behavioral model of farmer decision-making that allows for analysis of the relative impacts of the determinants of SSI value. The model departs from previous literature by assuming that SSI reduces uncertainty, but not eliminate it. Results show...