Conference Agenda

This paper aims to investigate the impact of land property rights on rural household resilience, the likelihood of households remaining non-poor overtime and withstanding shocks. Using the rollout of China’s large-scale land certification program and a larger panel data, we find that the program significantly increases household resilience. The program increases household asset holdings by 35% and decreases fluctuations in household welfare. We identify agricultural investments, access to credit, land rental market participation and labor allocation as potential mechanisms through which the land certification program affects household resilience. Our findings suggest that land property rights reform could be another effective strategy to alleviate poverty in line with the poverty trap hypothesis.

I use NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory – 2 (OCO-2) data to assess the impact of carbon dioxide on the yield of wheat, rice, and maize in India for 398 districts between the years 2014 to 2017. There have been limited studies that identify the large-scale impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on agricultural yield, especially for developing countries. Using district level panel fixed effects model, I find that wheat yield increases by 0.8 percent with a 1 part per million (ppm) increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Rice yield declines by 1 percent for a 1 ppm increase in carbon dioxide, while there is no significant effect of carbon dioxide on maize. There is an endogeneity problem arising from the simultaneity of plants being a source of CO2 by respiring it out, which I overcome by controlling for vegetation in a region using the solar induced chlorophyll index (SIF). The decline in the rice yield with increased CO2 in the atmosphere does not hold for the districts along the Indo - Gangetic plain (IGP), where the rice cultivars used are known to be superior to the rest of the country. I also test for the heterogeneity in the effect. For states that are leading in agriculture development in India (states with high GDP per capita and larger share of agriculture in GDP) I find that atmospheric carbon dioxide has no significant effect on agricultural yield across the three crops in these leading states, while there is a positive effect on wheat and maize yield for states that are lagging in agriculture growth. There is difference in the impact of carbon dioxide on yield based on water availability.

The adoption of agriculture insurance remains low in developing countries. In addressing the limited uptake, recent literature has highlighted the pivotal role of social learning (or learning from others): A farmer learns about a new technology by observing other farmers within her network who have adopted the technology, and this learning would significantly affect her adoption decision.

Using unique data on network of farmers who are members of autonomous micro-credit groups combined with randomized control trials, we investigate the effects of social network and self-learning on long-term adoption of crop insurance. We randomize premium subsidies for around 700 farmers in 44 Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) in Lai Chau province of Vietnam over three rice cropping seasons.The network data includes five farmers in the same VSLA with whom a farmer discusses agricultural production and financial issues the most often.

The results show a substantially positive effect of insurance-payout experience on uptake. Not only receiving a payout but also observing payout of the others in farmer network increases her future uptake. We find a significant impact of network uptake in the first season when crop insurance is introduced to farmers for the first time.

However, this effect is only short-lived and diminishes in the two following rice cropping seasons. The mechanism of payout effects comes from the improvement of insurance knowledge and trust to insurance provider.

The cocoa economy of Ghana depends on insect pollination. We use an economy-wide computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with an explicit representation of the ten regions of Ghana to model a decline in the cocoa pollinator population. Model scenarios are guided by a systematic literature review, supplemented with expert interviews. Changes in pollinator populations affect poor and rural households more than urban and rich households. Substantial income losses and decreased food consumption are observed in the Western region, the major cocoa-growing region. Declining cocoa pollinator numbers lead to an increased production of all other agricultural commodities, which considerably benefits the food processing sector. At the same time, the cocoa processing sector suffers high losses. Apart from activities related to agriculture, substantial changes are observed in the mining and finance industry with both

considerably increasing their output if pollinator numbers are on the decline.