We evaluated the impacts of the Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on rural households' holdings of livestock and forest assets/trees. We found no indication that participation in PSNP induces households to disinvest in livestock or trees. In fact, households that participated in the...

Microcredit schemes have become a popular means of improving smallholders' access to credit and making long term investment possible. However, it remains to be explored whether the current microcredit schemes are more successful than earlier formal small scale lending in identifying successful...

This paper analyses the economic impacts of climate change on Ethiopia’s agriculture using a countrywide computable general equilibrium model. The impacts on agriculture are based on results from a Ricardian model where current (and future) agricultural production is analyzed as a function of...

In low potential agricultural areas like the Honduran hillsides characterized by soil degradation and erosion, organic agriculture can provide a means to break the downward spiral of resource degradation and poverty. We use original survey data to analyze the factors influencing the decision to...

In low potential agricultural areas like the Honduran hillsides characterized by soil degradation and erosion, organic agriculture can provide a means to break the downward spiral of resource degradation and poverty. We use original survey data to analyze the factors influencing the decision to...

We report the results of a contingent valuation study of the value of a serious statistical accident (VSSA) in an urban road safety context in Sweden. To account for scale bias of responses (i.e., the insensitivity of the willingness-to-pay value to the size of the risk reduction being valued)...

We report the results of a contingent valuation study for finding a conservative estimate of the value-of-statistical-life in an urban road safety context in Sweden. We estimate the value of both a private-good device and a public-good safety program. The reduction of risk is communicated with a...

In this paper, we model the economic incentives surrounding opium crop production at farm level in Afghanistan. Specifically, we examine the impact of eradication policies when opium is used as a means of obtaining credit, and when the crops are produced in sharecropping arrangements. The...

In this paper, we examine whether a minimum level of ensured consumption from a social safety net has the potential of breaking the vicious circle of risk avoidance and low return in African agriculture. We study how the implementation of a social safety net programme in Ethiopia has affected...

This thesis consists of a summary and four self-contained papers. Paper [I] examines whether the implementation of a social safety net programme in Ethiopia has affected the value, risk and composition of farmers’ crop portfolios. The empirical analysis suggests that the value and risk of the...