The most cited paper ever published by the Journal of African Economies is Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warners “Sources of Slow Growth in African Economies.” The paper advises that despite decades of slow growth in Africa there should be considerable optimism regarding Africa’s future; if it could have only managed policy and governance quality that equalled the average non-African developing econ...

This paper examines the trade-off between resource intensive development and preservation of natural resources in the context of groundwater. Use of public schemes that expand groundwater irrigation to mitigate poverty is challenged as being unsustainable, especially when water tables around the world are rapidly depleting. This paper evaluates the effects one such scheme on groundwater use in ...

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. This paper assesses the performance of three types of commodi...

We use a randomized experiment in India to show that improved technology enhances agricultural productivity by crowding in modern inputs and cultivation practices. Specifically, we show that a new rice variety that reduces downside risk by providing flood tolerance has positive effects on adoption of a more labor intensive planting method, area cultivated, fertilizer usage, and credit demand. W...

We examine the effect of local precipitation shocks on appropriation risk faced by women using annual data from 583 districts in India over the period 2002-2007. We use annual deviations of rainfall from the long term local mean to isolate the impact of rain shocks on crimes against women. We find that dry shocks (below-average rainfall) increase reported domestic violence and dowry deaths, as ...

a r t i c l e i n f o JEL codes: C61 C71 C72 O13 O21 Keywords: Biofuel Supply chain Land use Spatial market equilibrium MPEC The rapid expansion of the biofuel industry diverts a large amount of agricultural crops as energy feedstocks, and in turn affects farm land allocation, feedstock market equilibrium, and agricultural economic development in local areas. In this paper, we propose game-theo...

This paper examines the role of the global institutional frameworks on the national processes of innovation diffusion. we focus on the influence of the Kyoto mechanisms on the diffusion of renewable energy technologies in the BRICS countries i.e. Brazil, China India, Russia and South Africa. Our preliminary analysis suggests that the Kyoto Mechanisms may support...

Exploiting the historical variations in the structure of the international co ee bean market, I separately identify the e ects of an international cartel agreement and the emergence of a fringe exporting country on the market power and the commodity's price. The results suggest that, of the 75-percent drop in the real co ee price between 1988 and 2001, the cartel's breakdown explains 49 points ...

In this paper, we argue that the fluctuations in the value of mehr and dowry observed since 1960s in Muslim marriages in Bangladesh can be explained by the natural economic and political shocks: the Green Revolution (GR) in the 1960s, the Independence War (IW) in 1971 and the famine in 1974. The positive income effect of the GR increased the values of both dowry and mehr. However, rise in agric...