Livestock are an important component of rural livelihoods in developing countries, but data about this source of income and wealth are difficult to collect because of the nomadic and semi-nomadic nature of many pastoralist populations. Most household surveys exclude those without permanent...

Accelerating development in Sub-Saharan Africa will require massive expansion of access to electricity -- currently reaching only about one-third of households. This paper explores how essential economic development might be reconciled with the need to keep carbon emissions in check. The authors...

This paper studies the impact of transport infrastructure projects of the Belt and Road Initiative on shipment times and trade costs. Based on a new data on completed and planned Belt and Road transport projects, Geographic Information System analysis is used to estimate shipment times before...

This paper quantifies the significance and magnitude of the effect of measurement error in remote sensing weather data in the analysis of smallholder agricultural productivity. The analysis leverages 17 rounds of nationally-representative, panel household survey data from six countries in...

The paper studies the dynamics of agricultural land use at the global scale as measured from space using satellite imagery between 2003 and 2018. It shows large global movements in and out of cropland and correlates these movements with biophysical, economic, and institutional variables. The...

With the surge in publicly available high-resolution satellite imagery, satellite-based monitoring of smallholder agricultural outcomes is gaining momentum. This paper provides recommendations on how large-scale household surveys should be conducted to generate the data needed to train models...

Between 2014 and 2016 unprecedented and consecutive climatic shocks ravaged Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. The largest ever emergency relief operation in the country's history ensued. The pathways and extent to which the humanitarian response protected livelihoods remain...

Economic integration of the African continent rests on two pillars: the ratification of an ambitious trade agreement and massive investment in transportation infrastructure. Leveraging a newly created city-level database on African exporters' transport times, transport route optimization and...