What's New

AGRODEP (African Growth and Development Policy Modeling Consortium) has now launched its fourth round of membership extension . Qualified economists from Africa are eligible; membership provides free access to cutting-edge economic research tools, resources, and training that may otherwise be unavailable to researchers in the region.

A new joint program led by UN Women, FAO, IFAD, and WFP aims to empower rural women to work for food security, economic development, and social progress. " Accelerating Progress Toward the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women " is a five-year initiative that will be implemented beginning in Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Nepal, Niger, and Rwanda.

While progress has stalled in the House of Representatives in recent weeks, the pending new five-year US Farm Bill will have important implications for agriculture. A new paper by Professor Carl Zulauf from the Ohio State University and IFPRI Senior Research Fellow David Orden , published by the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), looks at the competing bills coming out of the Senate and House of Representatives Agriculture Committee in light of their relationship to WTO limits on domestic support.

According to a new report released by FEWS, crisis-level food insecurity across West Africa has improved or stabilized in the past month, particularly from Mauritania to Chad and the eastern Sahel. Despite the improvement in food security, however, food aid will still be needed in the region through the fall to compensate for high prices and low household food stocks.

In economics and development work, experiments are becoming a widely used and accepted research tool. For such experiments to be a useful policymaking tool, however, it is necessary for both researchers and policymakers to have a clear understanding of how the experimental method works and how the results of experiments can be used to inform policy decisions.