| This essay is an evaluation of year one of the Rural Business Development (RBD) program for small rice farmers in León, Nicaragua. The RBD program is administered by the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and is designed to deliver agricultural extension advice and affordable credit in the form of inputs to farm households. This essay estimates the average impact of the program on rice yields and revenues utilizing inverse propensity score weighting combined with linear regression. In conducting statistical inference, it also accounts for the fact that agricultural outcomes are likely correlated over space in a small area such as the one studied here. The results suggest that the program had no impact on average, likely due to the presence of a severe... |
