This paper presents a synthesis of the main theoretical and empirical contributions that analyse production choices of farm households living and operating in developing countries. The review is particularly concerned with recent micro-economic contributions that highlight the trade-off farm households typically face, between full-income risk and expected return, while making production decisio...

This paper explores how wealth and inequality can affect self-governed solutions to commons dilemmas by constraining group cooperation. It reports a series of experiments in the field where subjects are actual commons users. Household data about the participants’ context explain statistically the usually observed wide variation found within and across groups in similar experiments. Participants...

We examine the effect of rainfall shocks on crimes against women using data from 583 Indian districts for 2002-2007. We find that a one standard deviation decline in annual rainfall from the local mean increases reported domestic violence by 4.4 percent and dowry deaths by 7.8 percent. Wet shocks have no apparent effect. These patterns are consistent with consumption smoothing by households rel...

The serological cross-reactivity between lipopolysaccharides (LPS) of S. fidelis KMM3582(T) and rabbit anti-O P. mirabilis antibodies was tested. Using ELISA and Western blot cross-reactivity between S. fidelis LPS and antisera against P. mirabilis O14, O3 LPSs was found. The observed cross-reaction may suggest that anti-P. mirabilis S1959 (O3) antibodies may bind to the internal part of S. fid...

Household diversification into nonfarm work activities is a major rural livelihood strategy in many developing economies. In this paper, we explore empirically if rural households in Uganda leverage their nonfarm earnings to overcome credit constraints and invest in high yielding maize seed varieties. We use a semiparametric estimator of binary outcomes that accommodates endogenous regressors s...

In this paper we search for pollution haven consistent evidence within China. Using a province level data set and three different measures of environmental stringency, we investigate whether inward foreign direct investment (FDI) is attracted to those regions with relatively low environmental regulations. Our results are consistent with pollution haven seeking behaviour by foreign investors. In...

This paper analyses the role barriers to trade in the form of high transaction costs have on market participation and supply response in rural food markets in developing countries. We present an empirical application on a sample of households in the Tanzanian region of Kagera. Exploiting the availability of a long term panel dataset to develop an error components switching regression model we c...

Trade has been considered a condition for growth and development, a view that might have merits in explaining the rise of the Western world. I use a new data set from archival sources of eighteenth-century China to revisit this question. This analysis suggests previous studies of market integration, which attribute much growth to a reduction in transport costs, have overestimated these effects....

Water saving agricultural technologies are a potentially important but under utilized lever to conserve groundwater in India. Technologies like laser levelers have high private returns and lead to water savings, yet the adoption rates are not very high. In order to provide insight for the design of policies to promote adoption, we conducted a survey based study about factors that influence the ...

Understanding the potential impacts of climate change on economic outcomes requires knowing how agents might adapt to a changing climate. We exploit large variation in recent temperature and precipitation trends to identify adaptation to climate change in US agriculture, and use this information to generate new estimates of the potential impact of future climate change on agricultural outcomes....