Consumption
Smoothing? Livestock, Insurance
and
Drought in Rural Burkina Faso (with
Christopher Udry),
Forthcoming
Journal of
Develpment
Economics
Abstract: This paper
explores the extent of consumption smoothing between 1981 and 1985 in
rural Burkina Faso. In particular, we examine the extent to which
livestock, grain storage and interhousehold transfers are used to
smooth consumption against income risk. The survey coincided with a
period of severe drought, so that the results provide direct evidence
on the effectiveness of these various insurance mechanisms when they
are the most needed. We find evidence of little consumption smoothing.
In particular, there is almost no risk sharing, and households rely
almost exclusively on self-insurance in the form of adjustments to
grain stocks to smooth out consumption. The outcome, however, is far
from complete smoothing. Hence the main risk-coping strategies which
are hypothesized in the literature (risk sharing and buffer stock),
were not effective during the survey period.
Motives
for Household Private Transfers
in
Burkina Faso ,
Journal
of Develpment Economics
79 (2006) pp. 73-117
Abstract: Resource transfers
among households have received considerable interest among economists
in recent years. Two of the main reasons for the surge of interest in
household transfers are the information on human nature conveyed by
transfer behavior and the implication on income redistribution policy
that private transfer might have. Empirical studies, however, provide
mixed results on transfer behavior. This is because previous inquiries
were confronted with several estimation issues and have focused on data
from developed countries where private transfers are already small.
This paper contributes to the literature on transfer behavior by using
a multifaceted econometric approach to examine the motives of household
transfers in Burkina, a low-income country with a well documented
tradition of gift exchanges. The findings suggest that risk sharing is
not central to transfers. Altruistic transfers are apparent for the
middle income class, but not at low income level. The evidence implies
that crowding out may be minimal at low income level, suggesting that
public transfers targeting poor households may be effective.
HIV/AIDS
Prevalence and the Demand for
Safe Sex: Evidence from West Africa
Abstract: Increasing
attention is being given to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa, with much of
the effort focusing on East and Southern Africa, where the epidemic has
been most pronounced. While it is justified to address the areas with
highest prevalence, it is also necessary to concentrate efforts
at preventing the spread of the disease and understanding what factors
drive risky sexual behaviors in areas of the continent where incidence
rates remain relatively low. This paper examines the determinants of
the adoption of low risk sexual behavior in West Africa. The
results show that individuals avoid risky sexual behavior if they
perceive HIV/AIDS incidence in their community to be high. More
educated people are more likely to adopt safer sexual behavior. In
rural areas, wealth level is still a significant determinant of condom
use, suggesting that price represent a substantial barrier to the
adoption of condom.
Returns
to Schooling for Wage Earners in
Burkina
Faso
Abstract: This paper use
national survey data to estimate up-to-date private rates of return to
education in Burkina Faso. Mincer earning regressions are fitted to
wage data for women and men, and for public and private sector workers.
The major results indicate that, rates of return rise by level of
education; and the public sector does not compensate female primary
education. The findings suggest that current education polices which
focus on increasing primary schooling supply be complemented with
support for children, especially girls from resource constrained
households to reach the secondary and tertiary levels. The estimated
returns to education are strongly influenced by sample selection. For
both men and women, failing to control for both selection in the wage
sector and sector choice leads to biased estimates, based on my
identification of the selection process.
Property
Rights, Production
Technology
and Deforestation:Cocoa in Cameroon (with
William Masters)
Fortchoming
Agricultural Economics
Abstract: In this paper, we
use a vintage-capital model with risk of
eviction to assess cocoa farmers’ response to changes in their tenure
security
and to the introduction of a new, faster-maturing cocoa variety. The
model is
calibrated with data from
Cameroon
in calendar year 2000, and then used to simulate the effects of
institutional
and technical change on farmer welfare and deforestation rates. Our
findings
can be summarized in three points. First, improved tenure security over
cocoa
fields increases farmers’ consumption and welfare, but at the expense
of more
deforestation. Second, the introduction of new cocoa varieties with
faster
maturity and higher input response also unambiguously raises farmers’
consumption and welfare. Doing so increases deforestation under
insecure land
tenure, but slows down deforestation under secure land tenure. Third,
when
introducing the two innovations together (more security and also new
varieties), there is both an increase in welfare and a decline in
deforestation. In sum, the availability of new cocoa cultivars calls
for
stronger tenure security, to accelerate investment and reduce
deforestation.
Investing
in Soils: Fields Bunds and
Microcatchments in Burkina Faso (with
William Masters),
Environment and Development Economics, 7:571-591, 2002
Abstract: This research uses field-level data from Burkina Faso
to
ask what determines farmers' investment in two well-known soil and
water
conservation techniques: field bunds (barriers to soil and water
runoff),
and microcatchments (small holes in which seeds and fertilizers are
placed).
Survey data for 1993 and 1994 are used to estimate Tobit functions,
compute
elasticities of adoption and intensity of use, perform robustness tests
and
estimate alternative models. Controlling for land and labor abundance
and
other factors we find that those who have more ownership rights over
farmland,
and who do more controlled feeding of livestock, tend to invest more in
both
technologies. The result suggests that responding to land scarcity with
clearer
property rights over cropland and pasture could help promote investment
in
soil conservation, and raise the productivity of factors applied to
land.
Substitution between domestic
and imported food in urban consumption
in Burkina Faso:Assessing the Impact of Devaluation (with
Kimsey
Savadogo),
Food Policy,24 535-551, 1999
Abstract: This article has analysed the changing patterns of
food
consumption between before the 1994 devaluation (based on information
from
a survey in 1983 and a recall by the sample households of consumption
patterns
in 1993) and after the devaluation (based on a short-term recall by the
sample
households in 1997). The major finding is that a shift has occurred in
urban
household food consumption following the dramatic change in the prices
of
imported rice and wheat relative to domestically produced coarse grains
(millet,
sorghum, maize). Urban households are found to consume more of the
domestically
produced coarse grains than the imported rice and wheat. This finding
is
particularly true for low income households and is corroborated both by
expenditure
and by meal-type frequency data. These results agree with macro level
data,
as the imports of rice dropped from 80 000 metric tons in 1991–92 to 40
000
metric tons in 1995–96. This drop is not compensated by domestic
production,
which increased by 40,000 metric tons in paddy (Ministry of Economy and
Finance
data).
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