2022

Monitoring and Impact Analysis of the EU-Funded Smallholder Support Programme (SSP) for Agriculture Transformation

FAO Syria is implementing the “Smallholder Support Programme” (SSP). The main objective of this programme is to contribute to the transformation of the agriculture sector in Syria by empowering vulnerable smallholder farmers and livestock keepers to be more productive, efficient and profitable as well as more informed, self-organised and risk aware. Two year after programme […]

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On the behavioral impacts of violence: Evidence from incentivized games in Kenya

Political violence is a major impediment to economic development, damaging social, physical and human capital. By contrast, the manner in which violence influences prosocial behaviors is less clear cut, even though these behaviors likely contribute to post-conflict outcomes at individual and aggregate levels. We propose that the standard routes through which the experience of violence […]

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Usefulness and misrepresentation of phone surveys on COVID-19 and food security in Africa

We survey efforts that track food security in Africa using phone surveys during the COVID-19 pandemic. Phone surveys are concentrated in a few countries mostly focusing on a narrow theme. Only a few allow heterogeneous analyses across socioeconomic, spatial, and intertemporal dimensions across countries, leaving important issues inadequately enumerated. We recommend that the scientific community […]

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The Life with Corona Survey

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis affecting everyone. Yet, its challenges and countermeasures vary significantly over time and space. Individual experiences of the pandemic are highly heterogeneous and its impacts span and interlink multiple dimensions, such as health, economic, social and political impacts. Therefore,there is a need to disaggregate “the pandemic”: analysing experiences, behaviours […]

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Effects of the intensity and duration of COVID-19 lockdown policies on the use of coping strategies:Evidence from four African countries

Governments worldwide have been responding to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic with various lockdown measures. These restrictions can have positive effects on curbing the spread of the virus but may also cause serious economic challenges. Evidence on how the severity of lockdown policies impact the well-being of households in low- and middle-income countries over […]

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Building Stability Between Host and Refugee Communities: Evidence from a TVET Program in Jordan and Lebanon

In fragile and conflict-affected places, it can be difficult to successfully build or improve livelihoods through jobs-based programming. Yet, in many fragile places, some programmes are not only tasked with delivering on these outcomes but also with changing and improving the attitudes, perceptions, beliefs or behaviours of their participants, particularly towards the societies in which […]

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Ethnic inequality and forced displacement

How does ethnic inequality shape victimization in violent conflicts? Our case study of the 2010 conflict in Kyrgyzstan tests whether communities with higher ethnic inequalities in education experienced more intense displacement. We find that local inequality in education between Kyrgyzstan’s ethnic majority and its largest minority robustly predicts patterns of forced displacement, controlling for alternative […]

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Weather shocks across seasons and child health: Evidence from a panel study in the Kyrgyz Republic

It has been shown consistently in the literature that early life exposure to extreme weather events affects children’s nutritional status and related long-term health and well-being outcomes. The effects of weather shocks other than rainfall, as well as heterogeneous effects among population subgroups and moderators of this relationship, however, are less well understood. By combining […]

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The Economic Burden of Violent Conflict

Calculating the consequences of global public bads such as climate change or pandemics helps uncover the scale, distribution and structure of their economic burdens. As violent conflict affects billions of people worldwide, whether directly or indirectly, this article sets out to estimate its global macroeconomic repercussions. Using a novel methodology that accounts for multiple dimensions […]

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