Coffee is Ethiopia’s most important export commodity, cultivated by over 6 million smallholder farmers in the country, and accounting for about one-third of the country’s commodity exports. While coffee production has increased over the last decade, coffee yields are low and several...

We conducted cascading phone surveys to assess the performance of Ethiopia’s main coffee value chain actors during the COVID-19 pandemic. In general, the coffee value chain actors in Ethiopia appear to have been resilient to the pandemic, despite disruptions. The share of coffee farmers who...

Shirking of front-line government agents can bear important welfare consequences in low-income countries. When effort or output cannot be monitored, motivating agents through contingent rewards is of limited use. We investigate whether enhancing agent’s competence at a task yields higher...

This paper provides a literature review on youth employment challenges in rural Africa. The rapidly changing demographic structure across the continent is expected to have important economic and social consequences, especially for employment. So far, despite sustained economic growth, African...

South Asia has long been synonymous with persistent and unusually high rates of child undernutrition — the so-called Asian enigma. Yet contrary to this stereotype, Bangladesh has managed to sustain a rapid reduction in the rate of child undernutrition for at least two decades. In this paper we...

Given the fact that Micro and Small scale enterprises (MSEs) are high on the Ethiopian government's agenda for mid-term growth and transformation plan (GTP), this study aims to investigate the major contributions and the potential of this sector to the Ethiopian economy. Using a CGE modeling...