Rapid population growth in many developing countries has raised concerns regarding food security and household welfare. To understand the consequences of population growth on in the general equilibrium setting, we examine the dynamics of population density and its impacts on household outcomes using panel data from Indonesia. More specifically we explicitly highlight the importance of migration to urban sectors in the analysis. Empirical results show that human capital in the household determines the effect of increased population density on per capita household consumption expenditure. The effect of population density is positive if the average educational attainment is high (above junior high school), while it is negative otherwise. On the other hand, farmers with larger holdings maintain their advantage in farming regardless of population density. The paper concludes with some potential lessons for African countries from Indonesia’s more successful rural development experiences.

This study has been conducted in order to generate evidence of the visibility of exit from farm input subsidies in an African context. The study simulates the impact of alternative exit strategies from Malawi’s farm input subsidy program on maize markets. The simulation is conducted using a multiequation partial equilibrium model of the national maize market, which is sequentially linked via a price-linkage equation to local rural maize markets. The model accounts for market imperfections prevailing in the country that arise from government price interventions. Findings show that some alternative exit strategies have negative and sustained impacts on maize yields, production, and acreage allocated to maize over the simulation period. Market prices rise steadily as a result of the implementation of different exit strategies. Despite higher maize prices, domestic maize consumption remains fairly stable, with a slow but increasing trend over the simulation period. Results further suggest that exit strategies that are coupled with improvements in agricultural extension services have the potential to offset the negative impacts of the removal or scaling down of agricultural input subsidies. The study findings demonstrate the difficulty of feasibly removing farm input subsidies. Study recommendations are therefore relevant for policymakers and development partners debating removal or implementation of farm input subsidies.

India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) is one of the largest public works programs globally. Understanding the impacts of NREGS and the pathway through which its impacts are realized thus has important policy implications. We use a three-round 4,000-household panel from Andhra Pradesh together with administrative data to explore short- and medium-term poverty and welfare effects of NREGS. Triple difference estimates suggest that participants significantly increase consumption (protein and energy intake) in the short run and accumulate more nonfinancial assets in the medium term. Direct benefits exceed program-related transfers and are most pronounced for scheduled castes and tribes and households supplying casual labor. Asset creation via program-induced land improvements is consistent with a medium-term increase in assets by nonparticipants and increases in wage income in excess of program cost.

Responsible land distribution in Asia, with ever-increasing limitations in space, requires the use of smart technologies, sophisticated models, intelligent algorithms, and big data repositories. This book presents new land management perspectives and fit-for-purpose, flexible, dynamic, and effective solutions for land management and land administration problems. Written by global experts from different Asian countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, etc., all these cases demonstrate how and why the uptake of geospatial technologies is booming and how to handle land scarcity and competing spatial interests in both urban and rural areas in Asia. FEATURES Summarizes trends of geospatial technologies in Asia Describes and applies leading-edge geospatial models Explains fit-for-purpose digital land administration Provides case studies and examples that include the use of smart land management tools Helps readers advance their understanding of geospatial and land management science Truly an interdisciplinary book, this text is a practical guide for an array of readers, such as practitioners in public and private companies involved in both geospatial and land management applications, as well as graduate students, researchers, academics, and professionals working in land administration, land management, spatial planning, real estate studies, geosciences, geoinformatics, and geodesy.

Uganda has made notable progress in reducing micronutrient deficiencies in recent years, but the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency (VAD) and anemia among children under 5 remain unacceptably high. According to World Health Organization criteria, VAD remains a public health problem in Uganda, and anemia is a severe problem. In this paper we explore the potential contribution to reducing both of these deficiencies using a genetically modified, high–provitamin A and high-iron banana (HPVAHIB) that is currently being developed. We present an ex ante analysis of the costs and nutritional benefits of HPVAHIB. Using the Ugandan National Household Survey of 2005/06, we analyzed the production and consumption patterns of highland cooking banana (nakinyika) and sweet banana (sukalindizi). Informed by the empirical findings, we developed geographically differentiated adoption, production, consumption, and diffusion patterns for several types of HPVAHIB. Based on households’ reported quantities of each type of banana currently consumed, we estimated the number of people consuming each banana and the quantities they consume, and then simulated the additional intakes of vitamin A and iron and estimated the number of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) saved attributable to each. Combining the health impacts with the estimated costs of the project, three impact measures of the HPVAHIB are developed: the cost per DALY saved, the benefit–cost ratio, and the internal rate of return. Eighteen scenarios are estimated. The base scenario, which includes only the biofortification of cooking banana with provitamin A at a level equal to 400 percent its intrinsic provitamin A content, estimates that the net present cost per DALY saved of HPVAHIB is US$62, its benefit–cost ratio is 16, and its internal rate of return is 31 percent. According to criteria established by the World Health Organization and the World Bank, the HPVAHIB project is a “very cost-effective” health intervention.

Agricultural extension is critical for agricultural growth and food security, but making the extension system effective, demand driven, and responsive to the needs of a diverse set of producers remains a challenge. As part of the institutional reforms in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the extension system is being reviewed to identify strategies and practical actions to transform the system to better respond to the knowledge needs in a rapidly changing agriculture and food sector. This paper provides an in-depth review of the agricultural extension system of DRC including an analysis of its policies and legal framework, organization, and management; links to critical institutions; and capacity and incentive of different actors in the system. This review involved document analyses, interviews with key informants, and surveys of 107 extension organizations and 162 extension agents in 156 randomly selected villages in western DRC. This review suggests serious funding constraints, human resource management problems, no linkage and coordination within the extension system and with research and education systems, and a majority of underserved communities and farmers. This review also highlights a good opportunity given the huge human resources (more than 11,000 agents) deployed into the sectors and territories as part of the Ministry’s agricultural inspection system. However, their mandate is not clear and they currently focus on data collection (census) and checking what farmers do and limited in extension and advisory work. This review highlights the urgent need for human resource or civil service reform; public-sector commitment and funding; infrastructure rebuilding and skills upgrading in extension, education and training, and research organizations; and a unified policy or strategy with clear vision, mandate, targets, and performance-based incentive system.

Weather shocks and natural disasters, it has been argued, represent a major threat to national and international security. Our paper contributes to the emerging micro-level strand of the literature on the link between local variations in weather shocks and conflict by focusing on a pixel-level analysis for North and South Sudan at different geographical and time scales between 1997 and 2009. Temperature anomalies are found to strongly affect the risk of conflict. In the future the risk is expected to magnify in a range of 21 to 30 percent under a median scenario, taking into account uncertainties in both the climate projection and the estimate of the response of violence to temperature variations. Extreme temperature shocks are found to strongly affect the likelihood of violence as well, but the predictive power is hindered by substantial uncertainty. Our paper also sheds light on the vulnerability of areas with particular biophysical characteristics or with vulnerable populations.

Inspired by the wide adoption of rigorous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in medical research, economists and other social scientists have increasingly used RCTs in their research. As researchers pick up projects amenable to the RCT methodology, they likely leave out important questions to which RCTs cannot be directly applied. As a result, RCTs have been criticized for the proclivity of addressing trivial questions. As a matter of fact, in medical research RCTs are an integral part of adaptive sequential experiment design—a few steps must be taken to screen out drugs that have toxins and strong side effects before running any RCTs on humans. In this paper, we argue that economists can learn a great deal from the design principles implemented in medical research. We develop a theoretical model to show the logic of adaptive sequential experiment design in the presence of uncertainty over negative effects and discuss how to choose samples in a population to minimize the experiment cost. We also point out the applications of our proposed framework in the economic domain, such as economic reforms and new product design.

Agriculture in African South of the Sahara (SSA) can be transformed if the right public support is provided at the initial stage, and it can sustain itself once the enabling environment is put in place. Successes are also specific to the location of projects. In Ghana, interesting insights are obtained from the successful Kpong Irrigation Project (KIP), contrasted with other major irrigation projects in the country. Through an exploratory review, we describe how a productive system evolved in KIP and how public support for critical aspects (accumulation of crop husbandry knowledge, selection and supply of profitable varieties, and mechanization of land preparation) might have created a productive environment that the private sector could enter and fill in the market for credit, processing, mechanization of harvesting, and other institutional voids that typically have constrained agricultural transformation in the rest of SSA. Slower progress in other projects also raises a number of questions. We conclude by summarizing those questions and some testable hypotheses for future research.