This study investigates the consequences of poor implementation in public workfare programs, focusing on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in India. Using nationally representative data, we test empirically for a discouraged worker effect arising from either of two mechanisms: administrative rationing of jobs among those who seek work and delays in wage payments. We find strong evidence at the household and district levels that administrative rationing discourages subsequent demand for work. Delayed wage payments seem to matter significantly during rainfall shocks. We find further that rationing is strongly associated with indicators of implementation ability such as staff capacity. Politics appears to play only a limited role. The findings suggest that assessments of the relevance of public programs over their lifecycle need to factor in implementation quality.

Policy making in food security is at a crossroads in India, particularly for the rice crop. Whereas India has emerged has a leading rice exporter over the last two years, the government has also introduced a large food subsidy program called the National Food Security Act. The program requires that 33.6 million metric tons of rice per year be distributed to the marginalized rural and urban populations of the country. In this study, we analyze the long-term impact of India’s Food Security Act on its domestic rice market and the international market for rice. We specify and apply a structural demand-and-supply model to India’s rice market and link it with the world rice market, as part of a broad partial equilibrium modeling system of international agriculture commodity markets. We specifically focus on three different scenarios—subsidy as a price effect, subsidy as an inelastic income effect, and subsidy as an elastic income effect—under the broader framework of the National Food Security Act. We find that at the end of the projection period (the 2024/2025 crop year), as a result of the rice subsidy program, the consumption of rice increases significantly by 6,831 thousand metric ton (MT) in the case of the price effect while the inelastic income effect has little on production, consumption which increase by 265 thousand MT and 269 thousand MT, respectively and no impact on rice export of India.

The study analyzes food inflation trends in India over the last decade. Annual trends show that different commodities have contributed to food inflation in different years and that no single commodity shows uniformly high inflation. A decomposition exercise shows that eggs, meat, fish, milk, cereals, and vegetables were generally the main contributors to recent food inflation. The contribution of pulses, except pigeon peas (arhar), and of edible oils remained low. Fruits and vegetables displayed a much higher degree of intrayear volatility, and high-weight commodities in the national consumption basket also showed very high inflation rates, which is a cause for concern. Results of the econometric analysis show that both supply and demand factors are important. Cereal and edible oil prices appear to be mainly driven by supply-side factors such as production, wage rates, and minimum support prices. For pulses, the effects of supply- and demand-side factors appear almost equal. The prices of eggs, meat, fish, milk, and fruits and vegetables appear to be driven mainly by demand-side factors.

The purpose of this report is to provide information and analysis to government, civil society, and donors interested in improving the well-being of the rural population of Mon State, Myanmar. Specifically, the report analyzes the different sources of income for rural households, as well as their socioeconomic characteristics, with a view to helping identify constraints on growth and potential pathways to improving incomes. The overall picture that emerges is one of a struggling agricultural sector and an economy heavily dependent on services for local employment and on international migration for income. The analysis is based on a sample of 1,632 rural households, designed to be representative of rural households in Mon State as a whole. The survey included a household questionnaire and a community survey, and gathered information on demographics, all economic aspects of the household, and access to infrastructure and services at the community level.

As in many parts of the developing world, the share of high value crops in agricultural gross domestic product (AgGDP) has increased substantially in Nepal. We contribute to the literature on trends in agricultural development in the poorest countries by answering the research question on “Does transition from traditional to high-value agriculture reduce rural poverty in poor developing countries”? We also identified the drivers leading to this transition. The study uses survey data from three rounds of the nationally representative Nepal Living Standard Surveys: NLSS I (1994/1995), NLSS II (2004/2005) and NLSS III (2010/2011). Multi-level model was used to study the determinants of agricultural diversification. To estimate the causal impact of agricultural diversification on welfare measures, propensity score matching and instrumental variable techniques were used. Results indicate that there has been a rightward shift in the distribution of the share (percent) of high-value crops between 1995 and 2004 and between 2004 and 2010, respectively. The area as well as the shared by major cereals (paddy, maize, and wheat) is declining over years. However, it is increasing for high-value crops (potato, vegetables, spices/condiments, and fruits). The percentage increase in share of the high-value crops was higher in or adjacent to urbanized districts between 1995 and 2010. The factors positively associated with the agricultural diversification are female-headed households, caste, mother's education, net-buyer status, urban region, remittance, farm size, kitchen garden, improved seeds, telephone and refrigerator. We found positive impact of agricultural diversification towards high-value crops on rural poverty and monthly per capita consumption expenditure. However, for cereal crops grower, we find the negative impact on poverty and monthly per capita consumption expenditure.

Advances in digital technologies continue to impact all areas of life, including the business sector. Digital transformation is ascertained to usher in the digitalized economy and involves new concepts and management tools that must be considered in the context of management science and practice. For business leaders to ensure their companies remain competitive and relevant, it is essential for them to utilize these innovative technologies and strategies. The Handbook of Research on Digital Transformation Management and Tools highlights new digital concepts within management, such as digitalization and digital disruption, and addresses the paradigm shift in management science incurred by the digital transformation towards the digitalized economy. Covering a range of important topics such as cultural economy, online consumer behavior, sustainability, and social media, this major reference work is crucial for managers, business owners, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.

In the face of increasing environmental stresses, there is a critical need to improve water-use efficiency in many arid and semiarid agroclimatic zones. Drip irrigation is a high-efficiency irrigation technology that can improve water-use efficiency in currently irrigated areas and transform areas that are not otherwise irrigable in practice. Although adoption of drip irrigation is growing rapidly in India, adoption is low in neighboring Pakistan. The authors of this paper undertook a discrete choice experiment framed around the hypothetical subsidized purchase of a drip irrigation system in four districts of Punjab, Pakistan. The nonrepresentative sample of adopters and nonadopters in the study districts identified a clear increase in the valuation of drip systems in the first several years following adoption. This finding suggests that farmers may be unaware of the opportunities for the use of drip irrigation on their farms or the benefits that may accrue from such use. In addition, farmers’ aspirations for cropping systems under drip were better predictors of the valuation of drip systems than were current cropping patterns, implying that a different agricultural landscape might reasonably emerge under improved adoption of drip. Aspirations differed across the different agroecological zones and water regimes captured by this study. Aspirations to substitute wheat crops for fruits and vegetables were associated with a higher appreciation of the subsidy level, whereas aspirations to expand wheat were associated with a higher appreciation of the area covered by the drip initiative; together, these findings imply a degree of control over the extent of wheat production in the landscape via careful design of the drip subsidy program. Although the penetration of drip irrigation is not yet sufficient to draw inferences from a representative sample, these results suggest a number of ways in which drip irrigation may transform Pakistan’s agricultural landscape

emphasizes the importance of identifying different pathways from agriculture to nutrition for better nutritional outcomes. Using a disaggregated dashboard approach with agriculture, food consumption, and demographic and health survey data, this study examines the progress of Indian states toward the Sustainable Development Goals. There is evidence of both disconnects and linkages among food security indicators along the agriculture-nutrition pathways. Through a broadened and comprehensive approach under one coordinating body with a good set of improved interventions and governance, Indian states can attain food and nutrition security by 2030. Such evidence based policy making is need of the hour to observe impact on the ground, rather than framing policies based on ideologies. At a time when the focus is more and more on impact, the shift

A monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system is of critical importance for evidence- and outcome-based planning and implementation in agriculture. The availability of and access to timely and reliable data to inform the M&E system is an undeniable asset. Our analysis highlights the use of survey data to generate relevant information and knowledge on the agricultural sector. The Poverty Monitoring Survey carried out in Senegal in 2011 is used to build the economic accounts for agriculture, which identify a value added of 581 billion CFA francs generated by Senegal’s farm households, representing 60 percent of the sector’s value added in 2011. The average farm household generated 646,500 CFA francs from farming in that same year. The information from the economic accounts for agriculture offers valuable inputs for decision-support tools such as the geographical information platforms (e-atlas) and social accounting matrixes used in strategic analyses and agricultural policy planning.

The high level of inequality in China has been a focus of interest for policy makers and researchers. However, few studies have evaluated the trend since 2010. With changes in the economic structure and new policy tools introduced in recent years, a revisit of Chinese inequality should give us the latest information about its evolution and the impacts of these economic and policy changes on income distribution. This paper argues that after a quarter century of sharp and sustained increase, Chinese inequality is now plateauing and even turning down. The argument is made using a range of data sources and a range of measures and perspectives on inequality. The evolution of inequality is further examined through decomposition by income source and population subgroup. Some preliminary explanations are provided for these trends in terms of shifts in policy and the structural transformation of the Chinese economy. The narrative on Chinese inequality now needs to focus on the reasons for this great turnaround.