Farmers' adoption of improved crop varieties could increase yields in low-income countries. However, the presence of measurement error in household surveys poses a challenge to estimating true returns. Using the 2018/19 Ethiopia Socio-economic Survey, we analyze the impacts of how three sources of measurement error: misperceptions of seed varieties, land area, and quantities harvested affect maize yields and input use. These data include DNA-fingerprinting of seed, GPS plot size information, and crop cuts that we compare to farmers’ self-reported estimates of these measures. Results indicate that the measurement error in self-reported seed variety adoption, especially from farmers who did not know they were using improved maize varieties, attenuates their estimated yield gains by 25 percentage points on average. The enhanced genetics of improved seed varieties accounts for a 41-percentage point yield increase over non-improved varieties, and increased input use accounts for a 30-percentage point gain for improved varieties on average.

Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103466 

Food waste is a substantial contributor to environmental change and it poses a threat to global sustainability. A significant portion of this waste accounts for plate waste and food surplus from food-service operations such as restaurants, workplace canteens, cafeterias, etc. In this work, we seek to identify potential strategies to optimize food consumption in all-you-can-eat food-service operations, in terms of minimizing food waste while ensuring quality of service (i.e., maintaining low wait-time, unsatisfied-hunger, and walk-out percentages). We treat these facilities as complex systems and propose an agent-based model to capture the dynamics between plate waste, food surplus, and the facility organization setup. Moreover, we measure the impact of plate size on food waste. The simulation results show reducing plate size from large to small decreases plate waste up to 30% while ensuring quality of service. However, total waste as the sum of food surplus and plate waste is lower with large plates. Our results indicate the need for optimizing food preparation along with designing choice environments that encourage guests to avoid taking more food than they need. 

Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2019.05.033 

We show that a fixed financial incentive reduces the amount of food waste in an all-you-can-eat university-dining hall. Results indicate that the incentive increased the likelihood of students cleaning their plates, but did not affect the amount of food taken. These results raise important questions about implementing well-studied policies in modifying food consumption. An unintended consequence of the monetary incentive might have led students to consume relatively more food, thus encouraging unwanted eating habits. 

Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2019.1578856 

We estimated welfare implications of two decisions that are made by rural households: the entire household migrated, and the household split into two or more households. Using tracking panel data from Malawi, we found that on average agricultural households where the whole household migrated between 2010 and 2013 in Malawi experienced a 38% reduction in per adult equivalent own-farm crop revenue. These households more frequently left areas with higher rainfall variability. Alternatively, households that split experienced a 21-27% increase in consumption per adult equivalent on average. This was generally because of reduction in household size rather than total consumption increasing.