Person: Gautam, Madhur
Global Practice on Agriculture
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Agriculture, Rural development
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Global Practice on Agriculture
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Last updated: January 31, 2023
Biography
Madhur Gautam is a Lead Economist with the Agriculture Global Practice at the World Bank. He has a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Maryland. His experience at the World Bank over the past 25 years spans Development Economics (Research), the Agricultural Policies Unit, the Independent Evaluation Group, and Operations. He has focused mainly on agricultural and food policy analysis and strategy, and has wide experience in economic and policy analysis and dialogue in Africa and South Asia.
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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
Publication Harvesting Prosperity: Technology and Productivity Growth in Agriculture(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020) Fuglie, Keith; Gautam, Madhur; Goyal, Aparajita; Maloney, William F.This book documents frontier knowledge on the drivers of agriculture productivity to derive pragmatic policy advice for governments and development partners on reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. The analysis describes global trends and long-term sources of total factor productivity growth, along with broad trends in partial factor productivity for land and labor, revisiting the question of scale economies in farming. Technology is central to growth in agricultural productivity, yet across many parts of the developing world, readily available technology is never taken up. We investigate demand-side constraints of the technology equation to analyze factors that might influence producers, particularly poor producers, to adopt modern technology. Agriculture and food systems are rapidly transforming, characterized by shifting food preferences, the rise and growing sophistication of value chains, the increasing globalization of agriculture, and the expanding role of the public and private sectors in bringing about efficient and more rapid productivity growth. In light of this transformation, the analysis focuses on the supply side of the technology equation, exploring how the enabling environment and regulations related to trade and intellectual property rights stimulate Research and Development to raise productivity. The book also discusses emerging developments in modern value chains that contribute to rising productivity. This book is the fourth volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers.Publication Repurposing Agricultural Policies and Support: Options to Transform Agriculture and Food Systems to Better Serve the Health of People, Economies, and the Planet(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-01-24) Laborde, David; Gautam, Madhur; Mamun, Abdullah; Pineiro, Valeria; Martin, Will; Vos, RobThe report finds that repurposing a portion of government spending on agriculture each year to develop and disseminate more emission-efficient technologies for crops and livestock could reduce overall emissions from agriculture by more than 40 percent. Meanwhile, millions of hectares of land could be restored to natural habitats. The economic payoffs to this type of repurposing would be large. Redirecting about $70 billion a year, equivalent to one percent of global agricultural output, would yield a net benefit of over $2 trillion in 20 years.Publication Bangladesh Rural Income Diagnostic: Enabling Faster and More Equal Income Growth in Rural Bangladesh(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-11-30) Genoni, Maria Eugenia; Gautam, MadhurThis Rural Income Diagnostic (RID) aims to answer the question: “What are the main opportunities and constraints to faster, sustained income growth for poor and vulnerable households in rural Bangladesh” This analysis is motivated by recent evidence highlighting the centrality of rural areas for poverty reduction in Bangladesh and the need to update our understanding of rural income dynamics to better inform policy solutions. The objective of the analysis is to inform the World Bank Systematic Country Diagnostic and governmentplanning. The analysis focuses on areas where progress can be made in the next five years, consistent with the country’s long-term development path. The focus on short-term priorities to accelerate rural income growth needs to be implemented in a manner that is consistent with, and does not distract from, long-run goals and investments that will have very high future returns, especially for the poor. These include investments in child nutrition, health, and education.Publication Uzbekistan: Second Agricultural Public Expenditure Review(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11) Zorya, Sergiy; Gautam, Madhur; Tesfaye, Teklu; Babaev, Sandjar; Nazarov, ParkhodPublic expenditures matter a lot for agricultural growth, food and nutrition security, sustainable food systems, and other interlinked developmental outcomes. The level of agricultural public spending is important as small budgets can rarely deliver results, let alone drive any transformation of the sector. Yet, global experience clearly shows that although greater spending on agriculture is important, it does not always guarantee better outcomes unless: (i) funds are allocated to the ‘right’ programs and functions, which help address market failures and deliver public goods (i.e., allocative efficiency); (ii) the right programs are being implemented well (i.e. implementation efficiency); and (iii) public expenditures are supported by market-friendly agricultural policies (i.e., no agricultural price distortions). Spending more on agriculture without making progress on all the above-mentioned conditions is not recommended, because higher public spending without progress on agricultural development could result in fiscal, inflation, exchange rate, and other macroeconomic risks, which would backfire on the agriculture sector itself in the medium to long run. The quality of public spending is, therefore, an important issue, which has become even more urgent during and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis. The crisis required Uzbekistan to make substantial unforeseen public expenditures, which resulted in the larger public borrowing and lower fiscal space in the future. This report presents a review of Uzbekistan’s AgPER to contribute to the policy dialogue on the repurposing of public expenditures and getting more value for money. This is the second AgPER for Uzbekistan prepared by the World Bank in the last three years. The first AgPER was completed in 2019. It fed into the Agricultural Strategy, which was being prepared at that time and later approved in October 2019. It set the 2016-2018 baseline of agricultural public expenditures for the Agricultural Strategy, underpinning Annex 4, which presented the direction of the major repurposing of agricultural public expenditures by 2030. The expenditure repurposing encompassed the phasing out of direct subsidies coupled with production conditions and a move toward more efficient farm support instruments, such as climate-smart direct farm support and investments in general support services to increase the developmental impact of public expenditures. The first AgPER presented global lessons about the impacts of various types of agricultural public expenditures (for example, their functional composition) on developmental outcomes in the agriculture sector, which were considered in preparation of Annex 4 of the Agricultural Strategy.