Agriculture

While Sub-Saharan African countries are increasingly vulnerable to climate change, they also face lower marginal cost for carbon reduction.

A lack of trust in product quality can distort markets, reducing demand and investment. Can a low-touch information campaign improve confidence in fertiliser quality in Tanzania, raising demand for a critical agricultural input?

A lack of reliable information about fertiliser quality depresses farmer demand, reducing crop yields and negatively impacting livelihoods.

We study the longer-term (5-7 year) enterprise effects of a large-scale, randomised unconditional cash transfer programme in Kenya, which can provide important insights into enterprise responses to redistribution and social protection programmes.

Poor product quality plagues developing country markets, especially for goods like agricultural inputs where quality is only revealed after a farmer has used them.

We develop a structural and computational framework that improves compensation accuracy of weather-indexed crop insurance through individualised coverage.

We study how incorrect and uncertain beliefs about product quality can persist in equilibrium, using the example of fertilizer in East Africa.

Can warehouse receipt finance improve trading terms for small farmers and reduce price seasonality? We study this question in the context of a warehouse receipt program in India using detailed market data and warehouse locations.

What are the gains from mechanization? We run a randomized control trial that subsidizes access to equipment rental markets to study how the adoption of mechanization shifts farming households’ labor supply, farm productivity and labor demand.