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In an attempt to go beyond the conventional mean impact assessment of agricultural interventions, this paper examines the distributional impacts of adoption of drought-tolerant maize varieties (DTMVs) on the productivity and welfare outcomes of rural farming households in Nigeria. The study employed a conditional instrumental variable quantile treatment effects approach to control for selection bias that may arise from both observed and unobserved factors. The empirical findings revealed that adoption significantly impacts the distributions of maize yield and farming households' welfare. In particular, the effects of adoption are larger at the lower tails of the distributions of yield and welfare outcomes, suggesting that the strategic roles of DTMVs adoption in raising productivity and reducing poverty are better among poor farming households. These findings emphasize that effective targeting and dissemination of improved agricultural technologies are critical for increasing maize yield and improving welfare outcomes of rural farmers in Nigeria. Policy measures targeted at tackling dissemination constraints, such as the promotion of informal seed sector, may help enhance the successful dissemination and adoption of DTMVs or any agricultural intervention without masking out any sub-groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite remarkable progress in the fight against poverty during the past few decades, the proportion of the poor living in developing countries is still on the high side. Many countries have promoted integration as an important development strategy; however, its impact on welfare of the poor is still unclear. In this study, we examine the roles of education and health dimensions of human capital in globalization and its impact on the poverty gap and the child mortality rate using cross-country panel data covering 110 developing countries between 1970 and 2015. We use a model based on system generalized method of moments (SGMM) to control for unobserved heterogeneity and potential endogeneity of the explanatory variables. The empirical results reveal that globalization reduces poverty gap and child mortality rate, and that an increase in the stock of human capital in developing economies improves welfare outcomes. The study also finds that human capital strengthens the negative impact of globalization on poverty gap and child mortality rate. For example, should enrollment in secondary school in Nigeria (in 2013) be increased from 39.2% to 61.6%, on average, it could translate into 2508 fewer under-five child deaths. We recommend that interconnectedness and promotion of human capital development should constitute a fundamental component of policy mix targeted at enhancing reduction of poverty and child mortality rate in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]