03. Journals

2,963 items available

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http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2210

These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 17

Droughts and Floods in Malawi: Impacts on Crop Production and the Performance of Sustainable Land Management Practices under Weather Extremes

(Cambridge University Press, 2021-01-25) McCarthy, Nancy ; Kilic, Talip ; Brubaker, Josh ; Murray, Siobhan ; de la Fuente, Alejandro

Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency of extreme weather events, increasing the vulnerability of smallholder farmers dependent on rain-fed agriculture. We evaluate the extent to which farmers in Malawi suffer crop production losses due to extreme weather, and whether sustainable land management (SLM) practices help shield crop production losses from extreme events. We use a three period panel dataset where widespread floods and droughts occurred in separate periods, offering a unique opportunity to evaluate impacts using data collected immediately following these events. Results show that crop production outcomes were severely hit by both floods and droughts, with average losses ranging between 32–48 per cent. Legume intercropping provided protection against both floods and droughts, while green belts provided protection against floods. However, we find limited evidence that SLM adoption decisions are driven by exposure to weather shocks; rather, farmers with more productive assets are more likely to adopt.
Public Investment Choices by Local and Central Governments

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02) Kosec, Katrina ; Mogues, Tewodaj

This paper examines the impacts of devolving authority for public resource allocation to local governments in a setting of limited electoral control. Such a setting differs from that assumed by seminal formal models of devolution, but describes many developing countries. This study presents a formal model of this setting and tests it using unique data from a natural experiment in rural Ethiopia whereby half of the country's regions were decentralized but not the other half. Employing a spatial regression discontinuity design, this article shows that decentralization strongly improved delivery of agricultural public services, which are of high priority to the central government. In contrast, it did not impact drinking water services, on which the central government places lower priority but citizens place high priority.
Costs and Benefits of Land Fragmentation: Evidence from Rwanda

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-10) Ayalew Ali, Daniel ; Deininger, Klaus ; Ronchi, Loraine

Panel data from Rwanda allow us to explore costs and benefits from land fragmentation in a non-mechanized setting using two methodological improvements, namely (i) a terrain-adjusted measure of travel time/cost required to visit all parcels to measure fragmentation; and (ii) instrumental variable (IV) approaches that use measures for inherited/allocated parcels and past displacement as instruments. Results suggest that fragmentation as measured by travel cost negatively affect yield, intensity of labor use, and technical efficiency while reducing yield variability. With some 7 percent increase in yields, the size of the estimated impact of potential consolidation remains modest, suggesting that in an unmechanized setting such as the one studied here, the costs of programs to reduce fragmentation may outweigh the benefits.
The Role of Social Ties in Factor Allocation

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-10) Beck, Ulrik ; Bjerge, Benedikte ; Fafchamps, Marcel

We investigate whether social structure helps or hinders factor allocation using unusually rich data from the Gambia. Evidence indicates that land available for cultivation is allocated unequally across households; and that factor transfers are more common between neighbors, co-ethnics, and kinship-related households. Does this lead to the conclusion that land inequality is due to flows of land between households being impeded by social divisions? To answer this question, a novel methodology that approaches exhaustive data on dyadic flows from an aggregate point of view is introduced. Land transfers lead to a more equal distribution of land and to more comparable factor ratios across households in general. But equalizing transfers of land are not more likely within ethnic or kinship groups. In conclusion, ethnic and kinship divisions do not hinder land and labor transfers in a way that contributes to aggregate factor inequality. Labor transfers do not equilibrate factor ratios across households. But it cannot be ruled out that they serve a beneficial role, for example, to deal with unanticipated health shocks.
What Drives Local Food Prices? Evidence from the Tanzanian Maize Market

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-02) Baffes, John ; Kshirsagar, Varun ; Mitchell, Donald

We examine the drivers of monthly changes in maize prices across 18 Tanzanian markets. Local prices respond three to four times faster to the main regional market (Nairobi) than to the international benchmark (US Gulf). More importantly, shocks from Nairobi account for only one third of the explained variation in domestic prices; the remaining two-thirds is accounted for by domestic influences (including harvest cycles, weather shocks, and trade policies). Further, we show that remoteness and the local agroecology systematically influence the behavior of food prices.
Agriculture, Aid, and Economic Growth in Africa

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-02) McArthur, John W. ; Sachs, Jeffrey D.

How can foreign aid to agriculture support economic growth in Africa? This paper constructs a geographically indexed applied general equilibrium model that considers pathways through which aid might affect growth and structural transformation of labor markets in the context of soil nutrient variation, minimum subsistence consumption requirements, domestic transport costs, labor mobility, and constraints to self-financing of agricultural inputs. Using plausible parameters, the model is presented for Uganda as an illustrative case. We present three stylized scenarios to demonstrate the potential economy-wide impacts of both soil nutrient loss and replenishment, and how foreign aid can be targeted to support agricultural inputs that boost rural productivity and shift labor to boost real wages. One simulation shows how a temporary program of targeted official development assistance (ODA) for agriculture could generate, contrary to traditional Dutch disease concerns, an expansion in the primary tradable sector and positive permanent productivity and welfare effects, leading to a steady decline in the need for complementary ODA for budget support.
Trains, Trade, and Transaction Costs: How Does Domestic Trade by Rail Affect Market Prices of Malawi Agricultural Commodities?

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-06) Zant, Wouter

We measure the impact of low-cost transport by rail in Malawi on the dispersion of agricultural commodity prices across markets by exploiting the quasi-experimental design of the nearly total collapse of domestic transport by rail in January 2003 due to the destruction of a railway bridge at Rivirivi, Balaka. Estimations are based on monthly market prices of four agricultural commodities (maize, groundnuts, rice, and beans) in 27 local markets for the period 1998–2006. Market pairs connected by rail when the railway line was operational are intervention observations. Railway transport services explain a 14 to 17 percent reduction in price dispersion across markets. Geographical reach of trade varies by crop, most likely related to storability and geographical spread of production. Perishability appears to increase impact, reflecting limited scope for arbitrage. Overall, impacts are remarkably similar in size across commodities.
The Short-Run Impact of Import Bans on Poverty: The Case of Nigeria (2008–2012)

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-06) Dabalen, Andrew ; Nguyen, Nga Thi Viet

The Nigerian government uses food import prohibition as part of policies that seeks to protect existing domestic producers and reduce the country's dependence on imports. This paper argues that such policies have negative effects on net consumers of such products due to higher prices. With 70 percent of poor households' budget spent on food, and about 13 percent of the total budget devoted to products subject to import bans, poor households are vulnerable to such trade policies. Prices of some import prohibited food products are found to be higher than what they would be in the absence of such bans. The elimination of import bans is estimated to reduce national poverty rates by as much as 2.6 percentage points.
If It Pays, It Stays: Can Agribusiness Internalize the Benefits of Malaria Control?

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-06) Sedlmayr, Richard

Might a malaria control intervention entail agricultural effects that allow a commercial agribusiness to offset its costs? The randomized allocation of 39,936 insecticide-treated mosquito nets among 81,597 smallholder cotton farming households in 1,507 clusters helps evaluate this in the context of Zambia's cotton outgrowing industry. But despite large health impacts on treated households, no impact on cotton deliveries to the agribusiness is detected. With some caveats, the results tend to strike a discord with recent evidence on the agricultural productivity effects of malaria control.
As Good as the Networks They Keep?: Improving Outcomes through Weak Ties in Rural Uganda

(The University of Chicago Press, 2018-04) Vasilaky, Kathryn N. ; Leonard, Kenneth L.

We examine an intervention randomized at the village level in which female farmers invited to a single training session were randomly paired with farmers whom they did not know and encouraged to share new agricultural information throughout the growing season for a recently adopted cash crop. We show that the intervention signi ficantly increased the productivity of all farmers except of those who were already in the highest quintile of productivity, and that there were signifi cant spillovers in productivity to male farmers.