Decentralization, agricultural services and determinants of input use in Nigeria:

Decentralization, agricultural services, Input use, household survey data, agricultural services, poor farmers, fertilizer use, government, modern inputs, unobserved heterogeneity,

Institutional change, rural services, and agricultural performance in Kyrgyzstan:

The institutional change in rural Kyrgyzstan during the transition period included farm reorganization, land reform, building markets, and community institutions. The land reform established private property rights to land, including the rights to transfer, exchange, sell, lease, and use the land as collateral for credit. These key features of Kyrgyzstan's agrarian transition are in sharp contrast with those of other transition countries in Central Asia. This paper reviews the process of institutional change in rural Kyrgyzstan, examines its impact on agricultural performance and discusses some remaining major institutional and policy constraints on agricultural growth in this country.Institutional change, Land reform, Agricultural growth, Rural services, Development strategies, Kyrgyzstan,

Decentralization and local public services in Ghana: Do geography and ethnic diversity matter?

"This paper explores disparities in local public service provision between decentralized districts in Ghana using district- and household-level data. The empirical results show that districts' geographic locations play a major role in shaping disparities in access to local public services in Ghana. Most importantly, the findings suggest that ethnic diversity has significant negative impact in determining access to local public services, including drinking water. This negative impact is significantly higher in rural areas. However, the negative impact of ethnic diversity in access to local public services (drinking water) decreases as average literacy level increases. The paper relates the results to literature and discusses policy implications of main findings." from authors' abstractDecentralization, Access to public services, Ethnic diversity, Geography, Development strategies,

Mountains, global food prices, and food security in the developing world

This study explores the differences between mountain and non-mountain countries in food security and its determinants. Econometric analysis shows that mountain regions are likely to have lower food security. The findings suggest that people in mountain countries are especially affected by external shocks such as surges in global food prices. The results of regression decomposition indicate that the disparity in food availability we observed between mountain and non-mountain countries can be explained by differences in population size, income, road density, and governance factors as well as by a differential impact of external price shocks. The direct impacts of geographic and agroecological factors seem rather limited.altitude, Developing countries, food security, global food prices, mountain regions,

Decentralization, local government elections and voter turnout in Pakistan:

"Decentralization has the potential to improve the accountability of government and lead to a more efficient provision of public services. However, accountability requires broad groups of people to participate in local government. Thus, voter turnout at local government elections is an important component of government accountability. This study used survey data on the 2005 local government elections in Pakistan to analyze the impact of electoral mechanisms, the credibility of elections, and voters' socioeconomic characteristics on voter turnout. The rational-choice perspective is applied to develop the specifications of the empirical model. The empirical analysis is based on a series of standard and multilevel random-intercept logistic models. Our important findings reveal that (1) voter turnout is strongly associated with the personal and social gratifications people derive from voting; (2) the preference-matching ability of candidates for local government positions is marginal; and (3) the introduction of direct elections of the district nazims—a key position in local government—might improve electoral participation and thus create a precondition for better local government accountability. The findings also suggest that less educated people, farmers, and rural people are more likely to vote." Authors' AbstractDecentralization, local government elections, political participation, voter turnout, Public service provision, Governance,

Tajikistan’s agrifood system structure and drivers of transformation

Tajikistan experienced strong annual economic growth of 6.8 percent during the 2011 to 2020 period (TAJSTAT 2020). This has translated into improved living standards, with the national poverty rate falling from 53.1 percent in 2007 to 26.3 percent in 2019 (World Bank 2023a). The global COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant slowdown in economic growth in 2020, but the economy rebounded in 2021. However, as a country heavily reliant on wheat and fuel imports, Tajikistan was severely affected by the Russia-Ukraine war that started in 2022, and more recently by the global recession in 2023 (Arndt et al. 2023; Diao and Thurlow 2023). Private remittances are the largest source of foreign exchange, accounting for nearly one-third of Tajikistan’s GDP and more than 40 percent of total foreign inflows. Russia is the most important destination for Tajikistan’s emigrants working abroad, and the ongoing war will continue to affect movement of people and inflows of remittances. Tajikistan’s GDP growth is projected to be 6.5 percent in 2023 and 5.0 percent in 2024 (World Bank 2023b), below its pre-pandemic growth trajectory