Many of the ‘new’ agricultural input subsidy programs (ISPs) in sub-Saharan Africa list raising farm incomes and reducing rural poverty among their objectives, but are ISPs achieving these objectives? We use data from two nationally-representative surveys of smallholder farm households in...

It is recognized that inorganic fertilizer, as is commonly distributed in large-­‐scale input subsidy programs, must be used along with soil fertility management (SFM) practices in order to maximize its efficacy. We use nationally representative data with 8,839 household observations to...

Replaced with revised version of paper 08/04/09.

We test the hypotheses that subsidies on hybrid seed change maize production, total household income, the severity of poverty, and relative deprivation among smallholder maize growers in Zambia. The analysis contributes to the literature by measuring the quantitative effects of seed (as compared...

Agricultural input subsidies often have implicit or explicit political economy objectives. Using panel data from Zambia, this article empirically tests whether election outcomes affect targeting of subsidized fertilizer and whether fertilizer subsidies win votes. Results suggest that the Zambian...

• The Zambia Urban Consumption Survey, a survey of 1,865 urban households in Lusaka, Kitwe, Mansa, and Kasama, was conducted in August 2007 and February 2008 by the Central Statistical Office in collaboration with the Zambia Food Security Research Project. • Survey results indicate that in...