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To assess the conventional view that assets uniformly improve childhood development through wealth effects, this paper tests whether different types of assets have different effects on child education. The analysis indicates that household durables and housing quality have the expected positive effects, but agricultural assets have adverse effects on highest grade completed and no effects on exam performance. Extending the standard agricultural-household model by explicitly including child labor, the study uses three waves of panel data from Tanzania to estimate the effects of household assets on child education. The analysis corrects for the endogeneity of assets and uses a Hausman-Taylor instrumental variable panel data estimator to identify the effects of time-invariant observables and more efficiently control for time-invariant unobservables. The negative effect of agricultural assets is more pronounced among rural children and children from farming households, presumably due to the higher opportunity cost of their schooling.

This study assesses the impact of livestock transfer and associated training on women’s empowerment in Zambia. Women’s empowerment is measured with women’s ‘decision making power’ on different farm household activities and resources. Using a two-period panel data from a field experiment in the Copperbelt Province, first, we demonstrate empirically that women’s empowerment serves as a key driver of economic wellbeing; it has positive effects on consumption expenditures and dietary diversity. We then use the difference-in-difference method with household level fixed effects and find a significant positive impact of the intervention on both women and men’s empowerment measures. While men and women from ‘treated’ households made most household decisions jointly, the intervention had larger impact on women’s decision making power. We demonstrate that the improvement in men and women’s decision making power largely comes from expansion in joint decisions. In particular, the intervention helped increase the proportion of joint decisions by 16% in all household activities considered and by 21% in decision spheres related to the transferred assets. The finding is consistent with the prediction of the Nash bargaining model because transferring economic resources to women members leads to pareto optimality in resource allocation only through co-operation between men and women.

This paper estimates differentiated effects of household asset ownership on educational outcomes of children ages 6 and above in Tanzania. The paper contributes to the literature by providing a theoretical framework that portrays a mechanism for different assets to have differential effects on child education. We use data from Living Standard Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) in Tanzania which provides panel data on both household wellbeing and agricultural practices and resources. Use of the LSMS-ISA data allows us to disentangle the complicated relationship between child education and agricultural assets in ways which would not be possible using traditional cross-sectional surveys of either household wellbeing or farm practices. We use the Hausman-Taylor instrumental variable (HTIV) panel-data estimator to efficiently control for time-invariant variables omitted from our specifications while allowing us to identify the effects of fixed controls while correcting for the endogeneity of assets. We find that, controlling for household income, different asset types have opposing effects on child educational outcomes. Household durables and housing quality characteristics have positive effects but agricultural assets have adverse effects on highest grade completed and test scores. We demonstrate that the negative effect of agricultural assets emerges from higher opportunity cost of schooling and that the effect is more pronounced among boys and children from poor households, grain crop farmers, and rural residents.

Over the years, the sugar sector has experienced tremendous growth which has been driven by increased Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). According to the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO 2013), raw sugar production rose from 135,000 tons in 1990 to 430,500 tons by 2012, while exports grew from less than a thousand tons to 273,000 tons over the same period FAO 2013). While increased investments have generated growth, they have also tended to create market structures in which a single multinational is dominant. This concentration raises concerns about the functioning of these increasingly important markets and the efficiency and equity implications.

In much of rural Africa, high transaction costs limit farmers’ market participation and thus their potential for income growth. Transaction costs can affect not only whether a farmer sells product but also whether sales occur at the farm gate on at a market. If production behavior is related to a chosen sales location, then analysis of interventions can be improved by explicit consideration of the decision of where to sell. This paper develops a double-selection model that explains consumption and production decisions by semi-subsistence farmers who first decide whether to be a seller and then whether to sell at the farm gate or at an off-farm location before deciding on production and consumption. The study tests the validity of this dual-criteria model against a single criterion model in which a grower first decides to be a seller and then decides production, consumption and sales location simultaneously. Dual-criteria and single-criterion models are compared while correcting inconsistency in estimations due to violation of homoskedasticity and normality assumptions in selection equations. The results suggest that the dual-criteria model provides more information than the single-criterion model using a sample of cassava producer in Benin.

Despite recent traces of economic growth, Ethiopia remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Though about 80% of its population is engaged in agriculture, agricultural productivity remains low and extremely vulnerable to climatic conditions. The adoption and use of modern technologies is generally accepted as a potential vehicle out of poverty for many but adoption rates in the country remain low with the nature of the adoption process largely unstudied (Spielman et al, 2007). This paper studies the impact of social networks in the technology adoption process in rural Ethiopia. In particular it tests for the presence of social learning effects. In addition to geographic networks, it considers the role played by other networks with more purposeful interactions such as a household’s friends. The study explores the differential impacts of social networks by network type, technology and the asset poverty status of households.

This paper reviews the purpose and potential of commodity exchanges in Africa. Drawing from the existing literature and using indicative empirics, it examines the conditions that enable successful exchanges, highlights the special challenges to setting up exchanges in Africa, and reviews alternatives to domestic exchanges. We argue that many critical preconditions for the successful establishment of commodity exchanges in Africa remain binding in the short to medium term. The development of commodity exchanges in the region is impeded by the relatively small size of domestic commodity markets, the weak physical and communication infrastructure, a lack of supportive legal and regulatory environments, and the likelihood of policy interventions, particularly in the staple cereals market. Meanwhile, the demand for a domestic commodity exchange for export crops may be limited due to the availability of well-established exchanges abroad and functioning auction floors. The paper highlights three points: (a) efforts to launch exchanges in Africa should realistically assess whether basic conditions for success can be met, (b) if the pre-conditions cannot be met, the use of existing exchanges abroad or the development of regional exchanges may be more feasible than the establishment of national commodity exchanges, and (c) the goals of risk management and reduced transaction costs might be achieved more effectively by improving market fundamentals through investments in transportation, information services, or other financial institutions.

Effective poverty reduction programs require careful measurement of poverty status. Several studies have shown conceptually that assets reflecting productive capacity form a more robust basis for identifying the poor than do flow variables such as expenditures or income. Nonetheless, little work has empirically compared poverty measurements based on assets and expenditures. This paper uses panel data from Ethiopia to generate an asset-based poverty classification scheme. Regression results are used to estimate an asset index and classify households into categories of structural poverty. Asset index dynamics are also explored to test for the existence of multiple asset index equilibria; evidence of potential poverty traps. Results provide evidence of multiple equilibria in the study sample as a whole as well as convergence at different levels over space, depending on commercialization opportunities and agroecological factors. The asset-based poverty classifications consistently predict future poverty status more accurately than do income-based measures, confirming that the asset-based measure could be used to more carefully target poverty interventions in rural areas and to more accurately assess the impact of those interventions.