Drawing on a new set of nationally
representative, internationally comparable household
surveys, this paper provides an overview of key features of
structural transformation—labor allocation and labor
productivity—in four African economies. New, micro-based
measures of sector labor allocation and cross-sector
productivity differentials describe the incentives
households face when allocating their labor. These measures

African governments and international
development groups see boosting productivity on smallholder
farms as key to reducing rural poverty and safeguarding the
food security of farming and non-farming households.
Prompting smallholder farmers to use more fertilizer has
been a key tactic. Closing the productivity gap between male
and female farmers has been another avenue toward achieving
the same goal. The results in this paper suggest the two are

The devastating civil war in Syria is
arguably one of the major civil conflicts in recent times.
The conflict started with protests in March 2011 and soon
after escalated to a violent internal war with no end in
sight to this date. The conflict has by the end of 2014
caused well in excess of 150,000 fatalities, and 6 million
internally displaced people (UN), and led 3 million refugees
to move out of the country (UNHCR). Beyond the human

The prime objective of the project/subproject is to improve the power sector in the State of
Mizoram and capacity building to achieve sustainable development in the long term. The Project is
expected to facilitate connection to remote/virgin area, to enhance the capacity & reliability of the system,
to improve voltage profile & to reduce losses and ultimately to enhance satisfaction for all categories of
consumers which in turn will spur growth & overall development in the whole State.

Africa is estimated to have great
potential for agricultural production, but there are a
number of constraints inhibiting the development of that
potential. Spatial data are increasingly important in the
realization of potential as well as the associated
constraints. With crop production data generated at 5-minute
spatial resolution, the paper applies the spatial tobit
regression model to estimate the possible impacts of

Nepal depends entirely on imports for
meeting its demand for petroleum products, which account for
the largest share in total import volume. Diesel is the main
petroleum product consumed in the country and accounts for
38 percent of the total national CO2 emissions from fuel
consumption. There is a general perception that the country
would economically benefit if part of imported diesel is
substituted with domestically produced jatropha-based

This paper examines whether cooperative
behavior by respondents measured as contributions in a
one-shot public goods game correlates with reported
pro-forest collective action behaviors. All the outcomes
analyzed are costly in terms of time, land, or money. The
study finds significant evidence that more cooperative
individuals (or those who believe their group members will
cooperate) engage in collective action behaviors that

A significant portion of the world’s
forests that are eligible for Reducing Emission from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation, known as REDD ,
payments are community managed forests. However, there is
little knowledge about preferences of households living in
community managed forests for REDD contracts, or the
opportunity costs of accepting REDD contracts for these
communities. This paper uses a choice experiment survey of

Women comprise 50 percent of the
agricultural labor force in Sub-Saharan Africa, but manage
plots that are reportedly on average 20 to 30 percent less
productive. As a source of income inequality and aggregate
productivity loss, the country-specific magnitude and
drivers of this gender gap are of great interest. Using
national data from the Uganda National Panel Survey for
2009/10 and 2010/11, the gap before controlling for

This Botswana Agriculture Public
Expenditure Review (AgPER) is one of a series of similar
studies undertaken in over a dozen countries in sub-Saharan
Africa under the framework of a program coordinated by
CAADP, supported by the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation and
the CAADP Multi-Donor Trust Fund, and implemented by the
World Bank. The AgPER presents data about actual expenditure
for the period 2000 to 2013, with an outlook on the

The main objective of this technical assistance paper is to provide
recommendations to the Royal Government of Bhutan for
modernizing its hydrometeorological services,
including capacity strengthening for disasterrelated
early warning systems (EWSs). The
DHMS does not have a national hydromet
services policy but is in the process of preparing
a strategic document to guide its modernization
and institutional reform process. This technical assistance paper contributes to this process and proposes a road

Between 2008 and 2012 the urban/rural poverty divide substantially narrowed
down, which was the result of relatively stable rural and rising urban poverty rates. Over the same period, food inflation spiked, whereby strong links between domestic and global price movements were observed owed to major import dependence on food. The high shares of consumption that households dedicate to food, especially among the poor, leave limited scope to deal with food price surges by economizing on non-food