Showing papers in "World Development in 2009"

TL;DR: The authors reviewed the literature from the late 1980s to the present and found evidence first of food processing then retail transformation, and mixed evidence of impacts on small farmers, both inclusion (particularly with resource-providing contracts) and exclusion (sometimes from scale-constraint, sometimes from inadequate non-land assets).

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore factors associated with small firm growth in developing countries, including individual entrepreneur characteristics, firm characteristics, relational factors (such as social networks or value chains), and contextual factors such as the business environment.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors quantified income and poverty effects of high-standards trade and integrated labor market effects, by using company and household survey data from the vegetable export chain in Senegal.

TL;DR: A review of the main mechanisms through which transparency can reduce corruption is presented in this article, which argues that transparency is insufficient in itself, and needs to be complemented by other types of policies.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the impact of mobile phone coverage on the marketing costs of agricultural commodities in Ugandan households in 94 communities, and found increased sales of banana in remote communities but not of maize.

TL;DR: The authors assesses the effect of the steadily growing remittance flows to sub-Saharan Africa and finds that remittances, which are a stable, private transfer, have a direct poverty-mitigating effect, and promote financial development.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compared contract and non-contract growers of apples and green onions in Shandong Province, China in order to explore the constraints on participation and the impact of contract farming on income.

TL;DR: The authors explored the effects of natural disasters on economic growth separately by disaster and economic sector and found that moderate disasters can have a positive growth effect in some sectors, severe disasters do not.

TL;DR: In this article, a case study of a community-based electric micro-grid in rural Kenya is presented, where the authors demonstrate that access to electricity enables the use of electric equipment and tools by small and micro enterprises, resulting in significant improvement in productivity per worker (100-200% depending on the task at hand) and in a corresponding growth in income levels in the order of 20-70% in the product made.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify the middle class as those living above the median poverty line of developing countries, even if still poor by rich-country standards, even though most of those in this new middle class remain fairly close to poverty.

TL;DR: In this paper, the impact of supermarkets on small contract farmers in the Highlands of Madagascar has been analyzed based on an analysis of primary data collected to measure the effect of supermarkets in the country.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the revenue effects of certified organic contract farming for smallholders and of adoption of organic agricultural farming methods in a tropical African context, and found that there are positive revenue effects both from participation in the scheme and, more modestly, from applying organic farming techniques.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated how remittances via trans-national networks affect human capital investments through relaxing resource constraints and facilitate households in consumption smoothing by reducing vulnerability to economic shocks.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify a continuum of buyers ranging from mission-driven enterprises that uphold alternative ideas and practices based on social, ecological, and place-based commitments, to quality-driven firms that selectively foster Fair Trade conventions to ensure reliable supplies of excellent coffee, to market-driven corporations that largely pursue commercial/industrial conventions rooted in price competition and product regulation.

TL;DR: This article argued that a series of arbitrary choices made in defining "success" or "failure" as achieving numerical targets for the MDGs made attainment less likely in Africa than in other regions even when its progress was in line with or above historical or contemporary experience of other regions.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors revisited the recent debate on the determinants of long-run economic growth with the simple idea that different factors matter at different country groups classified by income levels.

TL;DR: In this paper, a case study of South African wine shows that better product quality, improved processes, and some functional upgrading have co-existed with processes of "downgrading,” higher risks, and limited rewards, especially in traditional export markets.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that contradictory findings have emerged when looking at the remittances-growth link because of an omitted variable bias: specifically, remittance will be more likely to contribute to longer-term growth in countries with higher quality political and economic policies and institutions.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used a dynamic specification to estimate the impact of trade on within-country income inequality in a sample of 65 developing countries (DCs) over the 1980-1999 period.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors test for causality between financial deepening, trade openness, and economic development for 16 sub-Saharan African countries and find that only limited support is found for the popular hypothesis of finance-led growth.

TL;DR: This paper examined the convergence and divergence of results from economic studies of the relationship between land tenure security and agricultural productivity in Africa and how these results have been incorporated into recent agricultural, poverty alleviation, and land policy documents.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed the farm-level impact of supermarket growth on Kenya's horticulture sector, which is dominated by smallholders and revealed a threshold capital vector for entrance in the supermarket channel, which hinders small, rainfed farms.

TL;DR: The authors analyzed the social consequences of the commitment to "sustainability" in donor-funded AIDS programs in rural Malawi and examined how efforts to mobilize and empower local communities affect three strata of Malawian society: the villagers whom these programs are meant to help, the insecure local elites whose efforts directly link programs to their intended beneficiaries, and, more briefly, national elites who implement AIDS policies and programs.

TL;DR: In this paper, the interface of anthropological research on land with policy positions across formative periods is discussed, from the colonial period through to the present as land tenure reform has repeatedly become a development priority; and recent research on intensifying competition over land, its intersection with competition over legitimate authority, new types of land transfers, the role of claims of indigeneity or autochthony in land conflicts, and challenges of increasing social inequality and of commodification of land for analysis and for land reform.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the opportunities and challenges that private social standards pose for labor organizations and explored different labor responses to private social standard in East African cut flower industries, showing that retailer-driven chains offer more room for labor organisations to exercise their agency than the traditional cut flower value chains.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed the successes, failures, and processes of two main housing reconstruction policies adopted in post-Tsunami Sri Lanka and found that the potential for large-scale application of small-scale policies is discussed.

TL;DR: In this paper, the effects of land ownership and environmental conditions on out-migration to local, internal, and international destinations were investigated using survey data from the southern Ecuadorian Andes and an event history model.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the implications of regulation and supervision on micro finance institutions' profitability and their outreach to small-scale borrowers and women, and found that supervision is associated with substantially larger average loan sizes and less lending to women than in ordinary least squares regressions, although it is not significantly associated with profitability.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors used survey evidence from several Central and East European countries to document the growth of vertical coordination in the dairy chain, its relationship with policy reforms, its effects and the implications for small farms.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the determinants of international remittances by using new data on such variables as the skill composition of migrants, poverty, and interest and exchange rates.