Scaling Agricultural Policy Interventions

Lauren F. Bergquist, Benjamin Faber, Thibault Fally, Matthias Hoelzlein, Edward Miguel and Andres Rodriguez-Clare

No 30704, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Policies aimed at raising agricultural productivity have been a centerpiece in the fight against global poverty. Their impacts are often measured using field or quasi-experiments that provide strong causal identification, but may be too small-scale to capture the general equilibrium (GE) effects that emerge once the policy is scaled up. We propose a new approach for quantifying large-scale GE policy counterfactuals that can both complement and be informed by evidence from field and quasi-experiments. We develop a quantitative model of farm production, consumption and trading that captures important features of this setting, and propose a new solution method that relies on rich but widely available microdata. We showcase our approach in the context of a subsidy for modern inputs in Uganda, using variation from field and quasi-experiments for parameter estimation. We find that both the average and distributional impacts of the subsidy differ meaningfully when comparing a local intervention to one at scale, even for the same sample of farmers, and quantify the underlying mechanisms. We further document new insights on how GE forces differ as a function of saturation rates at different geographical scales, and on the importance of capturing a granular economic geography for counterfactual analysis.

JEL-codes: F15 F63 O13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: Scaling Agricultural Policy Interventions (2022)
Working Paper: Scaling Agricultural Policy Interventions (2022)
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