This paper is based on our ongoing joint work with Ravi Kanbur. Xi Chen is grateful to Ravi Kanbur for invaluable comments, guidance and encouragement. For comments and suggestions, please direct correspondence to Xi Chen at xc49@cornell.edu.

This paper explores the welfare changes as a result of changes in prices and quantities of Colorado labeled apples relative to domestically produced apples, using equilibrium displacement model with two-regions: Colorado State and the rest of the United States. The results showed that in the...

This paper is based on an ongoing joint work with David Sahn and Xiaobo Zhang.

Numerous national transfer programs around the world are designed with uniform benefit schedules imposed by central governments, but implemented by local governments. The Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) in Ethiopia, the second largest safety net in Sub Saharan Africa, is one such program....

This paper tests uses nationally representative data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to test whether a household’s market access, defined in terms of travel costs to the nearest town, facilitates resilience and reduces vulnerability to seasonal influences on child nutrition....

Efficient information exchanges between sellers and buyers are essential if prices are to act as a signal for resource allocation in an economy. In the case of seed and planting materials, information on quality traits are often difficult for consumers (farmers) to obtain prior to purchase,...

In the 1990s, prior to its accession to the WTO, China dramatically reduced market distortions in its agriculture. We use panel data of 10,488 households from 1989 to 2000 and ask whether these reforms improved the welfare of rural Chinese households measured by the share of calories from...

A procedure is developed to examine the ex-post impacts of improved maize varieties on poverty in rural Ethiopia. Yield and cost effects of adoption are estimated econometrically under assumptions of both homogeneous and heterogeneous treatment effects. A backward derivation procedure is...

This paper evaluates farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for the vegetative propagated orange fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP) planting material that is many times considered as a public good. Famers’ WTP for OFSP vines was elicited by conducting a real choice experiment (RCE) among 121 small...