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One of the most famous papers in development microeconomics is Chris Udry’s 1996 JPE article, in which he finds on average, within the same household and after controlling for a number of possible explanations, women remain less productive on their own plots than men are on their plots. That finding is at odds with economic theory, which dictates that productivity should be equal across all the plots owned by a given household. Here is the abstract of Udry (1996):

Virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is Pareto efficient. Within many African households, agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household. Pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots. I find, in contrast, that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men. The estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household. The paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results.

Ever since then, the gender gap in African agriculture has generated a great deal of discussion in development research and policy circles. All that has culminated a few weeks ago with the publication of a joint World Bank/ONE Campaign report on the gender gap, which discusses possible policy interventions aimed at eliminating the gender gap:

Click here for an answer (whose language is slightly NSFW…)

Joking aside: I know blogging has been light these past few weeks, but with the start of classes and seeing six job-market candidates (all of whom I have to meet with, attend a seminar by, and have dinner with), there has been little time for anything else. Regular blogging should resume next week.

(ht: Mathieu Lalonde.)

An important trade-off to ponder as most Americans are about to celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday that is largely centered around food:

Despite what you might hear at your local farmers’ market or Whole Foods, not all big farms are bad. Nor are all small organic farms sustainable. They may produce high-quality food, but if they don’t produce a lot of calories per acre, they are doing little to help increase the global food supply. How we increase this supply over the next few decades will determine agriculture’s sustainability. It’s worth exploring why this is so, because sustainable food production is a fundamental human need. Getting it right will require us to carefully assess the consequences of where and how we farm.

Already, the world’s farms take up an area the size of South America. By 2050, a global population of nearly 10 billion people will require roughly 70 percent more food. We have two options: Either we need to get more food out of the land we already farm, or we need to farm more land.

Continue readingFeeding the World: The $10 Billion Trade-Off