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PurposeThis study aims to develop and apply a multidimensional measure of financial inclusion (FI) to address measurement issues and determine the level of FI of rural smallholder farmers and the contribution of domain indicators to the level of FI in Nigeria.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adapts the Alkire–Foster method to develop a multidimensional FI index (MFII). A stratified two-stage sampling procedure is used to select 2,300 rural respondents from the 2016 Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) Smallholder Household Survey.FindingsResults indicate that 78% of rural smallholder farmers in Nigeria are financially excluded. In addition, owning a formal account is significantly different (p Practical implicationsResults of the study lead to policy recommendations for increasing the FI of rural smallholder farmers in Nigeria, which may be applicable to other countries.Social implicationsAchieving sustainable FI requires that interventions increase the FI of rural smallholder farmers by strengthening financial capability, participation and well-being and not only focus on formal account owners.Originality/valueThe study provides a new methodological and empirical contribution to the FI literature on rural smallholder farmers.

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses generally focus on intervention impacts or outcomes. Less common, however, are reviews of the assumptions and theory underlying the pathways between interventio...

The effectiveness of facility-level management is an important determinant of primary health care (PHC) reach and quality; however, the nature of the relationship between facility-level management and health system effectiveness lacks sufficient empirical grounding. We describe the association between management effectiveness and facility readiness to provide family planning services in central Mozambique.We linked data from the Ministry of Health's 2018 Service Availability and Readiness Assessment and a second 2018 health facility survey that included the World Bank's Service Delivery Indicators management module. Our analysis focused on 68 public sector PHC facilities in Manica, Sofala, Tete, and Zambézia provinces in which the 2 surveys overlapped. We used logistic quantile regression to model associations between management strength and family planning service readiness.Of the 68 facility managers, 47 (69.1%) were first-time managers and (18) 26.5% had received formal management training. Managers indicated that 63.6% of their time was spent on management responsibilities, 63.2% of their employees had received a performance review in the year preceding the survey, and 12.5% of employee incentives were linked to performance evaluations. Adjusting for facility type and distance to the provincial capital, facility management effectiveness, and urban location were significantly associated with higher levels of readiness for family planning service delivery.We found that a higher degree of management effectiveness is independently associated with an increased likelihood of improved family planning service readiness. Furthermore, we describe barriers to effective PHC service management, including managers lacking formal training and spending a significant amount of time on nonmanagerial duties. Strengthening management capacity and reinforcing management practices at the PHC level are needed to improve health system readiness and outputs, which is essential for achieving global Sustainable Development Goals and universal health coverage targets.

Studies of improved seed adoption in developing countries are almost always based on household surveys and are premised on the assumption that farmers can accurately self‐report their use of improved seed varieties. However, recent studies suggest that farmers’ reports of seed varieties planted, or even whether the seed is local or improved, are sometimes inconsistent with the DNA fingerprinting results of those crops. We use household survey data from Tanzania to test the alignment between farmer‐reported and DNA‐identified maize seed types planted. In the sample, 70% of maize seed observations are correctly reported as local or improved, while 16% are type I errors (falsely reported as improved) and 14% are type II errors (falsely reported as local). Type I errors are more likely to have been sourced from other farmers, rather than formal channels. An analysis of input use, including seed, fertiliser, and labour allocations, reveals that farmers tend to treat improved maize differently, depending on whether they correctly perceive it as improved. This suggests that errors in farmers’ seed type awareness may translate into suboptimal management practices. The average yield of seed that is correctly identified as improved is almost 700 kg per hectare greater than that of type I errors. This indicates that investments in farmers’ access to information, seed labelling, and seed system oversight are needed to complement investments in seed variety development.

Designing effective policies for economic development often entails categorizing populations by their rural or urban status. Yet there exists no universal definition of what constitutes an “urban” area, and countries alternately apply criteria related to settlement size, population density, or economic advancement. In this study, we explore the implications of applying different urban definitions, focusing on Tanzania for illustrative purposes. Toward this end, we refer to nationally representative household survey data from Tanzania, collected in 2008 and 2014, and categorize households as urban or rural using seven distinct definitions. These are based on official administrative categorizations, population densities, daytime and nighttime satellite imagery, local economic characteristics, and subjective assessments of Google Earth images. These definitions are then applied in some common analyses of demographic and economic change. We find that these urban definitions produce different levels of urbanization. Thus, Tanzania's urban population share based on administrative designations was 28% in 2014, though this varies from 12% to 39% with alternative urban definitions. Some indicators of economic development, such as the level of rural poverty or the rate of rural electrification, also shift markedly when measured with different urban definitions. The periodic (official) recategorization of places as rural or urban, as occurs with the decennial census, results in a slower rate of rural poverty decline than would be measured with time-constant boundaries delimiting rural Tanzania. Because the outcomes of analysis are sensitive to the urban definitions used, policy makers should give attention to the definitions that underpin any statistics used in their decision making., Highlights • The choice of rural definition can affect our understanding of economic change. • We use administrative, remotely sensed, and survey-based data in Tanzania. • Some indicators of economic development shift with different rural definitions. • Different definitions tend to paint a consistent picture of rural farms. • Periodic rural/urban recategorization affects the pace of rural poverty decline.

Data sources available to researchers and decision-makers are growing, and the potential savings and uses of new data to provide insights into development is the subject of considerable research1. This paper provides a framework for evaluating utility and quality tradeoffs when choosing data sources, and applies the framework to a case study comparing survey data and satellite-based estimates on consumption in Malawi and Ethiopia. The case study illustrates that while satellite data provides some relatively cost-effective insights into consumption, it still depends on (validating) survey data and may be less accurate when used to study some demographic sub-populations mentioned in the Sustainable Development Goals.

Donors and governments increasingly seek to deliver development projects through community-based organizations such as self-help groups (SHGs), but little is known about the effectiveness of such arrangements. This article briefly summarizes hypotheses regarding the effectiveness of interventions using SHGs and presents the results of an evidence review on the impacts of interventions delivered through SHGs on health, finance, agriculture and empowerment outcomes in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Though the impacts of SHG-based interventions are generally positive, the evidence base is limited and does not generally test whether alternative delivery mechanisms might be more effective.

Essential nutrients, including carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals, are required for human health and development. Inadequate intake can negatively affect development and result in a wide range of adverse health outcomes. Rice, maize, and wheat provide over 60% of the world’s food energy intake. Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), water, nitrogen, and soil micronutrients are the basis of this plant material. Since 1850–1900, CO2 concentrations have increased about 50%, with most of that increase since 1950. Higher CO2 concentrations increase photosynthesis, which then increases plant biomass, but also alters the nutritional quality of wheat, rice, and other C3 plants. We review the possible impacts of rising CO2 concentrations on human health, highlight uncertainties, and propose a research agenda to maintain the nutritional quality of C3 plants. We also synthesize options for addressing this critical challenge to nutritional safety and security. A complete research agenda requires addressing data and knowledge gaps surrounding plant biology and policy responses. Data on key nutrients are lacking, leading to a limited mechanistic understanding of the response of the plant ionome to elevated CO2 concentrations. Regular data are largely missing on nutritional status and food safety in low- and middle-income countries, limiting assessments of the magnitude of the risks. Research opportunities to fill gaps in data and understanding include herbaria studies, field-based natural and manipulative studies, leveraging natural plant variability, and innovations in seed quality. Improved models of cereal crop nutritional quality can project the magnitude and direction of possible future challenges; incorporating the effects of climate change into those models can further improve their robustness. Transdisciplinary research involving at least ecologists, plant physiologists, economists, and experts in human nutrition is essential for developing a systems-based understanding of the potential impacts of rising CO2 concentrations for human nutrition and the attendant consequences for achieving the sustainable development goal on food security.

Rural farmers in Vietnamese communes perceive climate risk and potential impacts on livelihood within a complex context that may influence individual and household decisions. In a primary survey of 1,145 residents of the Thach Ha district of Ha Tinh province, we gathered data regarding perception about stability in climate, potential risks to livelihood, demographic characteristics, orientation toward risk, and interest in expanding economic activity. Temporal analysis of meteorological and economic indicator data forms an empirical basis for comparison with human perception. We ask the basic question: Are rural farmers' perceptions of climate consistent with the historical record and reproducible within households? We find that respondents do perceive climate anomalies, with some anchoring on recent extreme events as revealed by climate observational data, and further that spouses disproportionately share perceptions relative to randomly simulated pairings. To put climate-related risk perception in a larger context, we examine patterns across a range of risks to livelihood faced by farmers (livestock disease, pests, markets, health), using dimension reduction techniques. We find that our respondents distinguish among potential causes of low economic productivity, with substantial emphasis on climate-related impacts. They do not express uniform concern across risks, but rather average patterns reveal common modes and distinguish climate concern. Still, among those expressing concern about climate-related risks to livelihood we do not find an association with expressed intention to pursue changes in economic activity as a risk management response.

Precise agricultural statistics are necessary to track productivity and design sound agricultural policies. Yet, in settings where multi-cropping is prevalent, even crop yield—perhaps the most common productivity metric—can be challenging to measure. In a survey of the literature on crop yield in low-income settings, we find that scholars specify how they estimate the area denominator used to measure yield in under 10% of cases. Using household survey data from Tanzania, we consider four alternative methods of allocating land area on multi-cropped plots, ranging from treatment of the entire plot as the yield denominator to increasingly precise approaches that account for the space taken up by other crops. We then explore the implications of this measurement decision for analyses of yield, focusing on one staple crop that is often grown on its own (rice) and one that is frequently found on mixed plots and in intercropped arrangements (maize). A majority (64%) of cultivated plots contain more than one crop, and average yield estimates vary with different methods of calculating area planted—particularly for maize. Importantly, the choice among area methods influences which of these two crops is found to be more calorie-productive per hectare. This choice also influences the statistically significant correlates of crop yield, such that the benefits of intercropping and including legumes on a maize plot are only evident when using an area measure that accounts for mixed cropping arrangements. We conclude that the literature would benefit from greater clarity regarding how yield is measured across studies.

Previous research has shown that men and women, on average, have different risk attitudes and may therefore see different value propositions in response to new opportunities. We use data from smallholder farm households in Mali to test whether risk perceptions differ by gender and across domains. We model this potential association across six risks (work injury, extreme weather, community relationships, debt, lack of buyers, and conflict) while controlling for demographic and attitudinal characteristics. Factor analysis highlights extreme weather and conflict as eliciting the most distinct patterns of participant response. Regression analysis for Mali as a whole reveals an association between gender and risk perception, with women expressing more concern except in the extreme weather domain; however, the association with gender is largely absent when models control for geographic region. We also find lower risk perception associated with an individualistic and/or fatalistic worldview, a risk‐tolerant outlook, and optimism about the future, while education, better health, a social orientation, self‐efficacy, and access to information are generally associated with more frequent worry—with some inconsistency. Income, wealth, and time poverty exhibit complex associations with perception of risk. Understanding whether and how men's and women's risk preferences differ, and identifying other dominant predictors such as geographic region and worldview, could help development organizations to shape risk mitigation interventions to increase the likelihood of adoption, and to avoid inadvertently making certain subpopulations worse off by increasing the potential for negative outcomes.

We contribute new individual and intra-household findings to the literature on positionality – the degree to which an individual's perceptions of well-being are influenced by his or her income or consumption relative to others – using primary data from Vietnam. In addition to a rich field setting for testing social preferences, we interviewed male and female spouses separately providing novel gender disaggregated data and intra-household measures. We find that income is positional for two-thirds of the respondents, with a fifth willing to continue foregoing absolute income to maintain their relative position. Unlike earlier results, we find that women are more positional on average than men. Our results suggest that one's sensitivity to positionality is related to changes in one's relative position over time; respondents reporting a higher standard of living at the time of marriage were associated with a higher degree of positionality. We find an association between accord in a couple's positionality and the degree to which wives exercise decision making authority in the household.

I. INTRODUCTION The empirical evidence on savings suggests that while poor families can and do save, lower income families are less likely to save and report lower rates of savings than do higher income families (Bucks et al. 2009). Meeting basic needs consumes most of a low-income family's household income. As a result, such families are more likely to save, if at all, only for very short-term goals (especially regular household needs) and for emergencies than are higher income households who are more likely to be saving for retirement (Bucks et al. 2009; Dunham 2001). In the last 10 years, advocates and community organizations in the United States have created new programs and policies intended to help low-income families save and to build durable assets. Michael Sherraden effectively disseminated the model for asset building in his book, Assets and the Poor (1991) where he posited that poor families are impoverished not only by having very low incomes, but also by lacking the economic and social benefits of asset ownership. His prescription was the creation of opportunities like matched savings programs that support savings and wealth-building. These programs provide the institutional structure and incentives for families to save toward assets like education, home ownership, and small business development. Since then, federal, state, and local governments and nonprofits have all contributed toward creating Individual Development Account (IDA) matched savings programs. Experience with IDA programs suggests that, while they can provide some families with a vehicle for increasing savings, they are not a panacea for the difficulties in saving or for family disadvantage. One rationale for matched savings programs is that the regular savings patterns they promote overcome a natural time inconsistency experienced by many individuals. An individual with time inconsistent preferences may want to save, but when the time comes to actually put money away, the desire for current consumption trumps the previous commitment to save. While higher income families have access to the commitment mechanisms offered by employer-based retirement savings, direct deposit, and home mortgages, lower income families often lack similar opportunities. Hence participation in matched savings programs may provide a self-commitment mechanism to help low-income individuals save. Understanding how time preferences are related to savings behaviors can help inform the design of matched savings programs or other asset-building initiatives for low-income individuals. In this article, we use data from a local matched savings program to assess the ability of low-income families to save within an IDA program and, more specifically, the influence that individual time preferences have on savings. We approach the problem of measuring the latent construct of time preference with factor analysis which may offer a novel way of addressing concerns of confounding factors such as risk attitudes. We find that responses to survey questions designed to elicit discount rates (implicit interest rates for future consumption) are best summarized by a single latent factor and cannot easily be used to otherwise distinguish among subgroups of participants. We find no strong evidence that discount rates were much affected by experience in the matched savings program. Consistent with expectations, participants with higher discount rates saved less, on average, in the first year of the program and were less likely to complete the savings program. II. LITERATURE REVIEW A. Time Preferences and Discount Rates The basic choice to save implies trading-off present for future consumption. Time preference is the desire for immediate over delayed consumption, and the discount rate measures the rate at which individuals are willing to make these intertemporal trade-offs. In spite of the importance of this parameter to the many intertemporal decisions we make--financial investing, education, our use of natural resources--until a decade ago there was little discussion in the economics literature about how discount rates are formed and whether and how they vary across individuals or over time. …

Using controlled experiments to compare the risk attitude and willingness to compete of husbands and wives in 500 couples in rural Vietnam, we find that women are more risk averse than men and that, compared to men, women are less likely to choose to compete, irrespective of how likely they are to succeed. Relevant to development programmes concerned with lifting women out of poverty, our findings suggest that women may be more reluctant to adopt new technologies, take out loans, or engage in economic activities that offer higher expected returns, in order to avoid setups that require them to be more competitive or that have less predictable outcomes.

Assuming that individual discount rates are constant over time has important implications for policies and programs that involve intertemporal decision making. Using original data from Vietnam and Russia, we find evidence that discount rates do change over time for many individuals, implying that preferences for savings and credit might not be intertemporally consistent. We find that commonly held beliefs about gender and age influences do not hold once having children and location are controlled for. Within countries, however, residency does matter. Rural Vietnamese populations have higher discount rates, and living in a Russian trading town is associated with significantly higher discount rates and present bias than living in a government town. We argue that these behaviors are particularly likely to influence resource allocation in developing economies because there are fewer formal institutions and competitive markets to temper their effects.

This paper explores whether there are systematic differences in decision-making between those who regularly allocate public resources and those who are the intended recipients. To test for differences we sample across farmers and policy makers in Vietnam. Our findings suggest that preference parameters such as fairness, risk orientation, discounting and control systematically differ between these two groups, and are predictors of the likelihood that an individual is in a position of allocating public resources or receiving them. Regardless of whether these differences are innate or socialized, they may help to explain the often unexpected outcomes of development policy interventions.

Rural farmers in Vietnamese communes perceive climate risk and potential impacts on livelihood within a complex context that may influence individual and household decisions. In a primary survey of 1,145 residents of the Thach Ha district of Ha Tinh province, we gathered data regarding perception about stability in climate, potential risks to livelihood, demographic characteristics, orientation toward risk, and interest in expanding economic activity. Temporal analysis of meteorological and economic indicator data forms an empirical basis for comparison with human perception. We ask the basic question: Are rural farmers' perceptions of climate consistent with the historical record and reproducible within households? We find that respondents do perceive climate anomalies, with some anchoring on recent extreme events as revealed by climate observational data, and further that spouses disproportionately share perceptions relative to randomly simulated pairings. To put climate-related risk perception in a larger context, we examine patterns across a range of risks to livelihood faced by farmers (livestock disease, pests, markets, health), using dimension reduction techniques. We find that our respondents distinguish among potential causes of low economic productivity, with substantial emphasis on climate-related impacts. They do not express uniform concern across risks, but rather average patterns reveal common modes and distinguish climate concern. Still, among those expressing concern about climate-related risks to livelihood we do not find an association with expressed intention to pursue changes in economic activity as a risk management response.

A variety of factors have been posited to account for rising levels of debt and dissaving. Using data spanning two decades, we explore whether attitudes towards thrift have shifted in Canada, demographic differences, and the relationship between peoples’ priority for teaching thrift to their children and their own savings behavior. Among other findings, education is a strong predictor of the value of teaching thrift, whereas income is a strong predictor of one’s ability to save. The data do not support conventional gender differences. French and English speaking Canadians differ more significantly than those born in Canada and immigrants born elsewhere.

The paper presents a conceptual scheme for understanding the impact of microcredit—small loans to poor borrowers—on common pool resources. Impacts on common pool resources are posited to occur through changes in household production and consumption, the focus on women, and the social capital created from group training, decision-making, and risk-bearing with the group lending techniques characteristic of many microcredit programs. Enhanced human and social capital can improve environmental outcomes. A nonrandom survey of microfinance organizations suggests increased environmental awareness and potential CPR stewardship through microcredit, but empirical research is needed to demonstrate actual impacts.

Earlier accounts of the creation of property rights in the California gold fields ignored culture and are incomplete. We argue that culture matters in solving collectiveaction problems. Such problems in the California gold fields were solved through reliance on cultural focal points. Focal points included individualism, equality, respect for property, and rewards commensurate to work. Cultural concepts of fairness served to create norms and institutions that miners were willing to defend, which included majority rule, election of officials, trial by jury, allocation of a firstcome, first-served basis and rules for working claims.

Empirical evidence that firms respond to differences in environmental compliance costs among jurisdictions - the industrial flight hypothesis - has been mixed. In this paper we propose a new explanation for this ambivalence which also sheds light on an emerging paradox in overseas investment: U.S. capital outflows appear to be sensitive to rising abatement costs, yet the investment recipients are increasingly countries with comparably stringent environmental standards. Our explanation for this paradox is based on the role of regulatory process costs, usually left out of total compliance costs. Most empirical work has looked for capital movement in response to differential abatement costs, predicting that investment would flow from environmentally stringent regimes to those with more lax environmental regulations, for example, from the U.S. to some developing countries. But little evidence has been found of these pollution havens. If however, at the margin, it is the liability risks, uncertainties and other expenses generated by the legislative and adversarial approach to regulation in the U.S that constitute the most important compliance cost differentials, then we have been looking for U.S. capital outflows in the wrong places. We begin by providing some background on adversarial legalism and transaction costs. Since data are unavailable for directly testing our hypothesis, in Section IV we present evidence in an effort to refute, or at least cast doubt, on the competing industrial flight hypotheses. We find that the share of U.S. direct investment abroad (DIA) in dirty industries, relative to clean industries, is increasing within several OECD countries with relatively strict environmental regulations, but cooperative legal and regulatory regimes. Additionally, Europe has been increasing their worldwide share of dirty DIA from the U.S. At the same time, European shares of clean DIA are falling, suggesting that the increase in dirty DIA is not simply a response to Europe becoming an increasingly favorable investment location for reasons unrelated to environmental regulations. Though our empirical results are necessarily tentative and our analysis limited by available data, we conclude that the policy debate over harmonizing environmental regulations to discourage industrial flight is, at least, incomplete without considering the regulatory and legal institutions that create, monitor, and enforce those regulations.

Why did the Western Apache allow individuals to own land, the Tzeltal only permit household ownership, and the Yucatec Maya share access within the community? This paper seeks to test a hypothesis of access rights across indigenous peoples, asserting that the choice of private, shared, or open access rights maximizes the resource's net value, rather than reflecting innate preferences for different property systems. This empirical work contributes to the literature with observations on over 40 early American groups. The cross-sectional study reveals how access rights differed across communities in response to the property's physical characteristics and community characteristics that affected the deadweight, governance, and exclusion costs of establishing and maintaining different access regimes.

Using viewer share and rating points for the Toronto|Hamilton television market, we estimate the demand for U.S. programs retransmitted in Canada and test several hypotheses on the effect of domestic content regulation, program type, simulcasting regulations, network affiliation, and other broadcasting variables on audience size. These estimates have general implications for the current trade debate over the cultural industries. More specifically, our results provide support for some U.S. rights holders arguing for greater compensation for the retransmission of programs in Canada, and they raise questions about the publicly stated rationale of domestic content quotas generating net social benefits. These results can generalize to the many European Union and English-speaking countries using similar domestic content quotas.

Many development policies and programmes are premised on a traditional economic model of rationality to predict how individuals will respond to changes in incentives. Despite the emphasis of these programmes on poverty reduction, economists and the development community in general are still unable to fully understand how the poor make decisions, especially under uncertainty and over time. Individuals avail themselves less than predicted in health programmes, participate less than expected in market opportunities, under or over insure themselves, and make short-run decisions that are inconsistent with their long-run welfare. The rise and fall of different descriptive models and paradigms of poor household behaviour can partly be attributed to this limited understanding. More helpful answers may lay within behavioural economics, that these insights are particularly important for poor populations, and that they can improve the future design, implementation and subsequent effectiveness of development programmes. Behavioural economics is an approach that rigorously …/

By law, 50 percent of private Canadian television broadcasters' programming must be Canadian. The author proposes that the laws promote one mandate of broadcasting policy by increasing programming diversity. The quotas induce substitution out of the dominant category and into other categories, in response to differential costs and revenues between domestic and imported programming. To test the hypothesis, profit maximizing programming that would exist without the regulations is simulated.and compared to observed programming. Herfindahl indices (calculated for predicted and observed programming, across stations, and across time), indicate that under some assumptions of broadcaster behavior, diversity across stations is higher with the content laws than without.

Many environmental factors constrain the production of major food crops in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. At the same time, these food production systems themselves have a range of negative impacts on the environment. In this paper we review the published literature and assess the depth of recent research (since 2000) on crop x environment interactions for rice, maize, sorghum/millets, sweetpotato/yam and cassava in these two regions. We summarize current understandings of the environmental impacts of crop production systems prior to crop production, during production and post-production, and emphasize how those initial environmental impacts become new and more severe environmental constraints to crop yields. Pre-production environmental interactions relate to agricultural expansion or intensification, and include soil degradation and erosion, the loss of wild biodiversity, loss of food crop genetic diversity and climate change. Those during crop production include soil nutrient depletion, water depletion, soil and water contamination, and pest resistance/outbreaks and the emergence of new pests and diseases. Post-harvest environmental interactions relate to the effects of crop residue disposal, as well as crop storage and processing. We find the depth of recent publications on environmental impacts is very uneven across crops and regions. Most information is available for rice in South Asia and maize in Sub-Saharan Africa where these crops are widely grown and have large environmental impacts, often relating to soil nutrient and water management. Relatively few new studies have been reported for sorghum/millets, sweetpotato/yam or cassava, despite their importance for food security on large areas of marginal farmland in Sub-Saharan Africa – however, there is mounting evidence that even these low-input crops, once thought to be environmentally benign, are contributing to cycles of environmental degradation that threaten current and future food production. A concluding overview of the emerging range of published good practices for smallholder farmers highlights many opportunities to better manage crop x environment interactions and reduce environmental impacts from these crops in developing countries.