This paper investigates the impacts of cotton marketing reforms on farm productivity, a key element for poverty alleviation, in rural Zambia. The reforms comprised the elimination of the Zambian cotton marketing board that was in place since 1977. Following liberalization, the sector adopted an outgrower scheme, whereby firms provided extension services to farmers and sold inputs on loans that ...

This paper analyzes the impact of prenatal exposure to seasonal food scarcity on childhood health in Ethiopia. I construct a novel measure of seasonal exposure based on reported months of relative food scarcity in the local community. I find that exposure has a significant negative impact on height by age five that strengthens by age eight. Effects decrease with household wealth and maternal ed...

While bringing positive impacts and benefits, cross-border infrastructure projects face additional challenges relative to national projects. Moreover, such projects involve a variety of technical, regulatory, institutional, and legal factors, and their obstacles constrain the development of cross-border infrastructure projects. This paper argues that proper technical specifications and well-fun...

This paper examines and quantifies the complex linkages between industrial activity, environmental regulations and air pollution in China. We utilize a little used dataset of Chinese industry specific emissions for a variety of pollutants between 1996 and 2003. Our analysis allows us to investigate the role played by different determinants of emissions intensity. We find pollution intensity to ...

In rural economies with missing or incomplete markets, idiosyncratic risk is frequently pooled through informal networks. Idiosyncratic shocks, however, are not limited to private goods but can also restrict an individual from partaking in or benefitting from a collective activity. In these situations, a group must decide whether to provide insurance to the affected member. In this paper, we de...

The Urban Informal Sector (UIS) is a major and expanding part of developing economies both in terms of employment and output. However, they cause substantial environmental damages and worsen living conditions, prompting authorities to impose rigid environmental regulations. Yet, these steps have been mostly arbitrary and based on adhoc popular sentiment or political exigencies and not on rigoro...

Today more than 2.7 billion people rely on biomass as their primary cooking fuel, with profound implications for the environment and people’s well-being. Wood provision is often time-consuming and the emitted smoke has severe health eff ects – both burdens that affl ict women in particular. The dissemination of Improved Cooking Stoves (ICS) is frequently considered an eff ective remedy for thes...

Article history: Received 22 April 2011 Received in revised form 8 April 2013 Accepted 14 April 2013 Available online 23 April 2013 Using a panel dataset of 31 provinces in China, this paper computes the output-oriented Malmquist productivity indexes and their decomposition in China's agricultural sector over the period 1994–2008. In the second-stage regression, which uses the efficiency change...

Information asymmetries are a well-recognized impediment to market efficiency. When quality is not observable by prospective buyers, the quality of marketed goods will suffer, and the volume of trade will be depressed. Using data from more than 2,000 maize samples collected in four Kenyan provinces, we show that the presence of aflatoxin, an invisible and dangerous fungal contaminant, is not re...

This article critically analyses the opportunities for Australia to revitalise its strategically important manufacturing sector in wake of COVID-19 pandemic. It considers Australia’s industry policy options on basis both advances theory industrial and recent proposals Australian context. draws work from The Institute’s Centre Future Work examining prospects renewal a post-COVID-19 economy, toge...