Improving farmers’ access to markets is widely recognized as a major development challenge. A review of the literature suggests that indicators of market access may bear little relationship to the specific processes of interest and hence provide misguided evidence of the impacts of improved...

This report uses panel data on 1,267 smallholder households to monitor changes in their access to markets and services. We find that Kenyan smallholders’ proximity to infrastructure, markets, and services has improved markedly over the last decade. These improvements, however, have not been...

This is a draft paper, submitted in advance of presentation at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association.

Paper accepted for presentation at the 27th Conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE), Beijing China, August 16-22, 2009, (Ref 690)

Agriculture in Ethiopia is changing. New players, relationships, and policies are influencing the ways in which information and knowledge are used by smallholders. While this growing complexity suggests opportunities for Ethiopian smallholders, too little is known about how these opportunities...

The paper uses a stochastic frontier analysis of production functions to estimate the level of technical efficiency in agriculture for a panel of 29 developing countries in Africa and Asia between 1994 and 2000. In addition, the paper examines how different components of an agricultural...

The rapid expansion of hybrid rice cultivation in China has contributed significantly to improving food security in the country since the 1980s. However, few other Asian countries have seen similar expansions in hybrid rice cultivation or the associated yield and output gains. This paper...

Social networks play an important role in generating learning externalities that can drive the diffusion of innovative, and potentially poverty-reducing, technologies. This is particularly the case in developing countries where rural education, extension, and agricultural information services...