Food-for-work (FFW) programs are commonly used both for short-term relief and long-term development purposes. In this paper we assess the potential of FFW programs to reduce poverty and promote sustainable land use in the longer run. There is a danger that such programs distort labor allocation...

The impact of fanya juu bunds on productivity in a high rainfall area in the Ethiopian highlands is analyzed based on data from a cross section household survey with multiple plot observations per household. The results from parametric and non-parametric analysis indicated that productivity from...

This article estimates the poverty reducing impact of land access in rural Uganda. Using balanced panel data for 309 households in 2001, 2003, and 2005, models that control for unobserved household heterogeneity and endogeneity of land acquisition and disposition are employed to measure the...

Making use of a unique tenant-landlord matched data from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, we are able to show how strategic response of tenants - to varying economic and tenure security status of the landlords - is important in explaining productivity differentials of sharecroppers. The results...

Degradation of land continues to pose a threat to future food production potential in many developing economies. Various approaches, mainly based on command-and-control policies, have been tried (with limited success) in the past to encourage adoption of erosion-control practices by farm...

This paper reports results from a study of resource degradation and conservation behavior of peasant households in a degraded part of the Ethiopian highlands. Peasant households' choice of conservation technologies is modeled as a two-stage process: recognition of the erosion problem, and...

This study sets out to assess the link between land leasing behavior and productivity differentials between male and female-headed households. A double-moral hazard model allows us to show that landlord's tenure insecurity leads to sub-optimal level of effort on tenant's part, via its impact on...

This paper analyzes the dynamic effects of the acreage restrictions and land diversion requirements that are characteristic of the farm subsidy programs in the United States. The subsidy payments a farmer receives are based upon historical base acreage, and it 1s sometimes optimal for a farmer...

Soil specific, chance constrained, dynamic models of agricultural production and nitrate leaching are developed to assess the impacts of nitrogen fertilizer taxes, quantity restrictions on fertilizer or leachate, and leachate permits. A programming model uses the solutions of these bioeconomic...