Prior work has shown that there is a significant amount of turnover amongst the African poor as households exit and enter poverty. Some of this mobility can be attributed to regular movement back and forth in response to exogenous variability in climate, prices, health, etc. ('churning'). Other crossings of the poverty line reflect permanent shifts in long-term well-being associated with gains or losses of productive assets or permanent changes in asset productivity due, for example, to adoption of improved technologies or access to new, higher-value markets. Distinguishing true structural mobility from simple churning is important because it clarifies the factors that facilitate such important structural change. Conversely, it also helps identify the constraints that may leave other households caught in a trap of persistent, structural poverty. The papers in this book help to distinguish the types of poverty and to deepen understanding of the structural features and constraints that create poverty traps. Such an understanding allows communities, local governments and donors to take proactive, effective steps to combat persistent poverty in Africa. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Development Studies.

Prior work has shown that there is a significant amount of turnover amongst the African poor as households exit and enter poverty. Some of this mobility can be attributed to regular movement back and forth in response to exogenous variability in climate, prices, health, etc. ('churning'). Other crossings of the poverty line reflect permanent shifts in long-term well-being associated with gains or losses of productive assets or permanent changes in asset productivity due, for example, to adoption of improved technologies or access to new, higher-value markets. Distinguishing true structural mobility from simple churning is important because it clarifies the factors that facilitate such important structural change. Conversely, it also helps identify the constraints that may leave other households caught in a trap of persistent, structural poverty. The papers in this book help to distinguish the types of poverty and to deepen understanding of the structural features and constraints that create poverty traps. Such an understanding allows communities, local governments and donors to take proactive, effective steps to combat persistent poverty in Africa. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Development Studies.

This book analyzes the impact food aid programmes have had over the past fifty years, assessing the current situation as well as future prospects. Issues such as political expediency, the impact of international trade and exchange rates are put under the microscope to provide the reader with a greater understanding of this important subject matter.
This book will prove vital to students of development economics and development studies and those working in the field.

This book presents a unique analysis of the moral and social dimensions of microeconomic behaviour in developing countries and calls into question standard notions of rationality and many of the assumptions of neo-classical economics, showing how these are inappropriate in communities with widespread disparity in incomes. This book will prove to be essential for students studying development economics.

The 1954 Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act, effectively began the modern era of food aid. Over the past fifty years the lives of hundreds of millions of people worldwide have been improved. Despite this it remains one of the most misunderstood and controversial instruments of contemporary international policy.
"Food Aid After Fifty Years" explores the motivations and modalities of food aid and examines issues which impinge on its effectiveness. The book utilizes analytical and empirical accounts of food aid to resolve key misunderstandings and explore long standing myths. An alternative strategy is presented for recasting food aid, making it more effective in alleviating poverty, hunger and vulnerability.
"Food Aid After Fifty Years" provides a clear, comprehensive and current explanation of a wide range of issues surrounding food aid and its policy and operations and will prove vital to students of Development Economics and Development Studies and those working in the field.

This open access book is the result of an expert panel convened by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and Nature Sustainability. The panel tackled the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 head-on, with respect to the global systems that produce and distribute food. The panel's rigorous synthesis and analysis of existing research leads compellingly to multiple actionable recommendations that, if adopted, would simultaneously lead to healthy and nutritious diets, equitable and inclusive value chains, resilience to shocks and stressors, and climate and environmental sustainability.

Development economics is in many senses the most fundamental field within the discipline of economics, focused on understanding how resource allocation, human behaviour, institutional arrangements, and private and public policy jointly influence the evolution of the human condition. As the opening sentence of T.W. Schultz's 1979 Nobel Prize lecture declared, 'Most of the people in the world are poor, so if we knew the economics of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matters.' Development economics research ultimately explores why some countries, communities, and people are rich and others poor. Rapid economic growth is, in historical terms, a recent phenomenon confined to the past 300 years for less than one-quarter of the world's population. Growing and seemingly persistent gaps in prosperity between rich and poor peoples - within and between countries - contributes to sociopolitical tensions, affects patterns of human pressure on the natural environment, and generally touches all facets of human existence. Understanding the process of economic development is thus central to most research in economics and the social sciences more broadly. Development economics nonetheless emerged as a distinct field of analytical, empirical, and institutional research only in the past half century or so, with especially rapid progress in the past generation. Development Economics is a new Major Work from Routledge. Edited by a well-established scholar who has published broadly in the field, this four-volume collection provides a thorough review of the evolution of the field, covering development microeconomics, meso-level institutional phenomena associated with communities and markets, as well as development macroeconomics, in each case integrating theoretical and empirical research. Including a newly written and extensive introductory essay that summarizes the state of the field and the history of thought in development economics for those new to the area, the collection will be welcomed by academic researchers, policy practitioners, and students alike.

When conducting research in developing countries, an ability to negotiate a bewildering array of cultural and logistical obstacles is essential. Overseas Research: A Practical Guide distills essential lessons from scores of students and scholars who have collected data and done fieldwork abroad, including how to prepare for the field, how and where to find funding for one's fieldwork, issues of personal safety and security, and myriad logistical and relational issues. By encouraging researchers to think through the challenges of research before they begin it, Overseas Research will help prepare fieldworkers for the practical, logistical, and psychological considerations of very demanding work, help save valuable time, make the most of scarce financial resources, and enhance the quality of the field research. This third edition contains new material on social media, including representation of research subjects/collaborators, students' digital branding and image, and representing universities abroad when posting publicly. It also covers emerging technologies such as solar panels for power in remote locations, new ways of digitally sending and receiving money, and incorporates more perspectives of women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color researching abroad. The book will be of interest to overseas fieldworkers, and also to undergraduates in subjects such as anthropology, economics, geography, history, international studies, politics, sociology, and development studies.

This book presents a unique analysis of the moral and social dimensions of microeconomic behaviour in developing countries and calls into question standard notions of rationality and many of the assumptions of neo-classical economics, showing how these are inappropriate in communities with widespread disparity in incomes. This book will prove to be essential for students studying development economics.

When conducting research in developing countries, an ability to negotiate a bewildering array of cultural and logistical obstacles is essential. Overseas Research: A Practical Guide distills essential lessons from scores of students and scholars who have collected data and done fieldwork abroad, including how to prepare for the field, how and where to find funding for one's fieldwork, issues of personal safety and security, and myriad logistical and relational issues. By encouraging researchers to think through the challenges of research before they begin it, Overseas Research will help prepare fieldworkers for the practical, logistical, and psychological considerations of very demanding work, help save valuable time, make the most of scarce financial resources, and enhance the quality of the field research. This third edition contains new material on social media, including representation of research subjects/collaborators, students' digital branding and image, and representing universities abroad when posting publicly. It also covers emerging technologies such as solar panels for power in remote locations, new ways of digitally sending and receiving money, and incorporates more perspectives of women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color researching abroad. The book will be of interest to overseas fieldworkers, and also to undergraduates in subjects such as anthropology, economics, geography, history, international studies, politics, sociology, and development studies.

Global food price spikes in 2008 and again in 2011 coincided with a surge of political unrest in low- and middle-income countries. Angry consumers took to the streets in scores of nations. In some places, food riots turned violent, pressuring governments and in a few cases contributed to their overthrow. Foreign investors sparked a new global land rush, adding a different set of pressures. With scientists cautioning that the world has entered a new era of steadily rising food prices, perhaps aggravated by climate change, the specter of widespread food insecurity and sociopolitical instability weighs on policymakers worldwide. In the past few years, governments and philanthropic foundations began redoubling efforts to resuscitate agricultural research and technology transfer, as well as to accelerate the modernization of food value chains to deliver high quality food inexpensively, faster, and in greater volumes to urban consumers. But will these efforts suffice? This volume explores the complex relationship between food security and sociopolitical stability up to roughly 2025. Organized around a series of original essays by leading global technical experts, a key message of this volume is that actions taken in an effort to address food security stressors may have consequences for food security, stability, or both that ultimately matter far more than the direct impacts of biophysical drivers such as climate or land or water scarcity. The means by which governments, firms, and private philanthropies tackle the food security challenge of the coming decade will fundamentally shape the relationship between food security and sociopolitical stability.

Global food price spikes in 2008 and again in 2011 coincided with a surge of political unrest in low- and middle-income countries. Angry consumers took to the streets in scores of nations. In some places, food riots turned violent, pressuring governments and in a few cases contributed to their overthrow. Foreign investors sparked a new global land rush, adding a different set of pressures. With scientists cautioning that the world has entered a new era of steadily rising food prices, perhaps aggravated by climate change, the specter of widespread food insecurity and sociopolitical instability weighs on policymakers worldwide. In the past few years, governments and philanthropic foundations began redoubling efforts to resuscitate agricultural research and technology transfer, as well as to accelerate the modernization of food value chains to deliver high quality food inexpensively, faster, and in greater volumes to urban consumers. But will these efforts suffice? This volume explores the complex relationship between food security and sociopolitical stability up to roughly 2025. Organized around a series of original essays by leading global technical experts, a key message of this volume is that actions taken in an effort to address food security stressors may have consequences for food security, stability, or both that ultimately matter far more than the direct impacts of biophysical drivers such as climate or land or water scarcity. The means by which governments, firms, and private philanthropies tackle the food security challenge of the coming decade will fundamentally shape the relationship between food security and sociopolitical stability.

This open access book is the result of an expert panel convened by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and Nature Sustainability. The panel tackled the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 head-on, with respect to the global systems that produce and distribute food. The panel's rigorous synthesis and analysis of existing research leads compellingly to multiple actionable recommendations that, if adopted, would simultaneously lead to healthy and nutritious diets, equitable and inclusive value chains, resilience to shocks and stressors, and climate and environmental sustainability.

Handbook of Agricultural Economics, Volume Five highlights new advances in the field, with this new release exploring comprehensive chapters written by an international board of authors who discuss topics such as The Economics of Agricultural Innovation, Climate, food and agriculture, Agricultural Labor Markets: Immigration Policy, Minimum Wages, Etc., Risk Management in Agricultural Production, Animal Health and Livestock Disease, Behavioral and Experimental Economics to Inform Agri-Environmental Programs and Policies, Big Data, Machine Learning Methods for Agricultural and Applied Economists, Agricultural data collection to minimize measurement error and maximize coverage, Gender, agriculture and nutrition, Social Networks Analysis In Agricultural Economics, and more.

What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms--not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological--that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps--gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures--chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.