Papers and Presentations

Paper: Coping with COVID-19 shocks in rural Nepal

This study examined shocks experienced by rural Nepali households during the COVID-19 pandemic and the results include that households mostly relied on credit, asset sales and savings to protect consumption, and that beneficiaries of a livestock livelihood program were 6 percentage points less likely to take out new loans as a means to cope.

Paper: Bundling Genetic and Financial Technologies for More Resilient and Productive Small-Scale Agriculture

This paper results reports from a RCT in Mozambique and Tanzania that bundled stress-tolerant maize seeds with index insurance for a seed-replacement guarantee. The analysis shows that farmers who experienced shocks and saw both technologies in action subsequently increased their agricultural investments, allowing farmers to return to return to their pre-shock positions and even to move toward higher expected incomes.