The paper uses the concept of credit limit to analyze the determinants of household access to and participation in informal and formal credit markets in Malawi. Households are found to be credit constrained, on average, both in the formal and informal sectors; they borrow, on average, less than half of any increase in their credit lines. Furthermore, they are not discouraged in their participat...

We evaluate the short-term impact of financial support to smallholder farmers and training program to married women in two regions of Ethiopia. Using household-level panel data from the World Bank collected in 2010-2012, the combined Difference-In-Difference (DID) and matching methods are applied. The three main findings emerge from the analysis shows that first; the program seems to improve ru...

INTRODUCTION DEFINITIONS CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RURAL NONFARM ECONOMY Size Composition Equity impact DYNAMIC PATHWAYS OF RURAL NONFARM GROWTH Shifting motors of rural economic growth The “pull” scenario in dynamic agricultural regions The “push” scenario in stagnant agricultural zones Urbanization and migration Liberalization and globalization Summing up IMPLICATIONS FOR THE RURAL POOR Motivati...

Current knowledge on product marketing in Ethiopia is poor and inadequate for designing implementing policies to overcome problems the system. This study was conducted identify factors influencing market participation decision of smallholder haricot bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) farmers Northwest Ethiopia. Survey data were collected from 312 analyzed using Heckman’s two-step econometric model th...

INCE 1974, FOLLOWING PUBLICATION of Schuh’s “The Macroeconomics of Agriculture,” much research effort has been devoted to determining whether and how monetary policy affects the farm sector. One of the more active areas of interest has been the question of whether changes in the money stock affect the farm! nonfarm product relative price ratio. The reason for this particular interest, as descri...

Over the past five decades, the world has unleashed enormous energy and creativity into improving the lot of the rural poor. Outside India and China, efforts have often drawn inspiration from these two leaders, initially from India and more recently from China. Following the early India model, much of this effort has targeted small rural nonfarm enterprises, on which the landless poor of the de...

This paper provides an analytical review of empirical studies into the impact of schooling on entrepreneurship selection and performance in less developed countries. We analyze the variation of this impact across countries, estimation methods, definition of entry and performance, and the use of control variables. We find that one year of schooling raises enterprise income by an average of 5 per...

Many fear China’s accession to WTO will impoverish its rural people, via greater import competition in its agricultural markets. We explore that possibility bearing in mind that, even if producer prices of some (land-intensive) farm products fall, prices of other (labor-intensive) farm products could rise. Also, the removal of restrictions on exports of textiles and clothing could boost town an...