The success of development programs,
including water resource projects, depends on two key
factors: the role of underlying institutions and the impact
synergies from other closely related programs. Existing
methodologies have limitations in accounting for these
critical factors. This paper fills this gap by developing a
methodology, which quantifies both the roles that
institutions play in impact generation and the extent of

Trade policies can promote aggregate
efficiency, but the ensuing structural adjustments generally
create both winners and losers. From an incomes perspective,
trade liberalization can raise gross domestic product per
capita, but rates of emergence from poverty depend on
individual household characteristics of economic
participation and asset holding. To fully realize the growth
potential of trade, while limiting the risk of rising

The paper revisits the site of a large,
World Bank-financed, rural development program in China 10
years after it began and four years after disbursements
ended. The program emphasized community participation in
multi-sectoral interventions (including farming, animal
husbandry, infrastructure and social services). Data were
collected on 2,000 households in project and nonproject
areas, spanning 10 years. A double-difference estimator of

There is compelling evidence of the
importance of gender equality for poverty reduction and
sustainable growth. So it should come as no surprise that
most development actors-international agencies, bilateral
donors, and most developing countries, have an official
policy for promoting gender equality. Millennium Development
Goal 3 (MDG3) on gender equality and women's
empowerment is shared global commitment. With only seven

Index insurance, such as weather
indexing, addresses other inherent problems in insurance by
using an indicator that is not affected by individual
behavior and may address monitoring costs and moral hazard.
A number of innovations using index insurance are being
tried currently in diverse settings ranging from India to
Mongolia to Malawi. Marketing costs may limit the provision
of such insurance to small farmers, but even in such cases

The objective of this report is to
identify ways of enhancing competitiveness through sector
reforms in Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali (the
Cotton-4). The report promotes best practices to manage cost
and define sales strategies so as to enhance the
contribution of the cotton sector to shared growth and
lessen the risk of contingent liabilities borne by the
countries. Areas of improvement, investigated in the report,

This paper explores the role of export
costs in the process of poverty reduction in rural Africa.
The authors claim that the marketing costs that emerge when
the commercialization of export crops requires
intermediaries can lead to lower participation into export
cropping and, thus, to higher poverty. They test the model
using data from the Uganda National Household Survey. The
findings show that: i) farmers living in villages with fewer

This paper investigates how reductions
of barriers to migration affect the decision of middle
school graduates to attend high school in rural China.
Change in the cost of migration is identified using
exogenous variation across counties in the timing of
national identity card distribution, which made it easier
for rural migrants to register as temporary residents in
urban destinations. The analysis first shows that timing of

This paper examines how farmers have
adapted their livestock operation to the current climate in
each agro-ecological zone in Africa. The authors examine how
climate has affected the farmer's choice to raise
livestock or not and the choice of animal species. To
measure adaptation, the analysis regresses the farmer's
choice on climate, soil, water flow, and socio-economic
variables. The findings show that climate does in fact

This paper addresses labor markets in
Haiti, including farm and nonfarm employment and income
generation. The analyses are based on the first Living
Conditions Survey of 7,186 households covering the whole
country and representative at the regional level. The
findings suggest that four key determinants of employment
and productivity in nonfarm activities are education,
gender, location, and migration status. This is emphasized

In this paper, the authors examine the
impact of reductions in barriers to migration on the
consumption of rural households in China. The authors find
that increased migration from rural villages leads to
significant increases in consumption per capita, and that
this effect is stronger for poorer households within
villages. Household income per capita and non-durable
consumption per capita both increase with out-migration, and

This paper provides empirical evidence
of nonlinearity in the relationship between crop
specialization in a village economy and the extent of the
market (size of the urban market) relevant for the village.
The results suggest that the portfolio of crops in a village
economy becomes more diversified initially as the extent of
the market increases. However, after the market size reaches
a threshold, the production structure becomes specialized