SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

The cotton economy of Burkina Faso has been characterized by a changing rural environment for farmers since late nineties, which has come with the cotton reform and the resulting cotton boost. There have been slight improvements in living standards and rural households’ income while the subjective feeling of wealth has significantly increased. In this paper, I explore the channels through which the elements of the changing rural environment can bridge the wedge between subjective and objective measures of wealth. In addition to the basic determinants of subjective welfare that can be found in the happiness economics literature, namely absolute and relative income measures, health and social status (and expectations of future incomes), I investigate the...

The Burkinabe Cotton Story 1999-2007: Sustainable Success of Sub-Saharan Mirage?

Palavras-chave: Subjective wealth; Burkina Faso's cotton; Rural development; Agricultural policy; Perceptions; Community/Rural/Urban Development; Crop Production/Industries; I32; O13; Q16; Q18.

Ano: 2008

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/45780

Kaminski, Jonathan; Headey, Derek D.; Bernard, Tanguy.

Like many other African countries in the 1980s, Burkina Faso was urged to engage in a far-reaching liberalization of its state-led cotton sector. Yet unlike most of its neighbors, the Burkinabè government rejected both the status quo and wholesale liberalization, and instead embarked on a more gradual and sequenced reform path characterized by institutional innovations and partial privatization. Whether the reforms contained genuinely successful elements is therefore an important question, but also a difficult one given the absence of a counterfactual, the confounding influence of exogenous shocks and the recent financial troubles of the sector. To unravel this puzzle, this paper reviews existing evidence linking the reforms to various outcomes, but also...

Subjective Wealth, Policy Change, and Political Opinions: Evidence from the Cotton Reform in Burkina Faso

Palavras-chave: Burkina Faso; Cotton; Poverty Reduction; Counterfactual analysis; Production Growth; Political Sustainability; Crop Production/Industries; Farm Management.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/93137

Endogenous Economic Reforms and Local Realities: Cotton policy-making in Burkina Faso

This paper provides new evidence on the pattern of individual subjective welfare after a natural experiment in policy-led rural development, and aims to identify the causal relationships between subjective welfare and political opinions on the effects of the policy change. I adopt a structural approach by introducing a reference-based utility function that contains a signal of individual participation in the policy change, which is conveyed by political opinions. Using data collected in cotton areas of Burkina Faso, several simultaneous estimations are performed to analyze seemingly covariant political opinions on the recent cotton reform and changes in subjective wealth, while addressing measurement issues related to subjective indicators as well as...

Tipo: Article

Palavras-chave: Subjective Wealth; Burkina Faso; Policy Change; Rural Development; Political Opinions.; Environmental Economics and Policy; Political Economy; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; I32; 013; Q16; Q18.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/119531

Kaminski, Jonathan; Serra, Renata.

This paper explores the case for believing endogenous reforms to be more developmental than externally-imposed reforms, by drawing on the recent unorthodox experience of cotton sector reform in Burkina Faso. We address questions about reform emergence, feasibility, developmental impact, and sustainability. Our analysis, which carefully incorporates local social and political realities, suggests that the urban elites dominating the Burkinabè state favoured a particular cotton reform process, because it provided them with higher rents; while allowing for some rent distribution to the rural world which secured national consensus around reform. Endogenous reforms, though more feasible, are not necessarily more sustainable over time. In Burkina Faso, the...

Tipo: Journal Article

Palavras-chave: Cotton; Cotton policy-making; Reforms; Burkina Faso; Agricultural Finance; Environmental Economics and Policy; Financial Economics; International Development.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/116227

Contracting with Smallholders under Joint Liability

Replaced with revised version of paper Jan. 11, 2012

Land Use, Production Growth, and the Institutional Environment of Smallholders: Evidence from Burkinabe Cotton Farmers

Palavras-chave: Contract farming; Moral hazard; Joint liability; Peer monitoring; Agricultural Finance; Consumer/Household Economics; Farm Management; Financial Economics; Public Economics; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods; D82; L14; 013; Q13.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/93128

Kaminski, Jonathan; Thomas, Alban.

The cotton boom in Burkina Faso consisted of a growth in cotton land shares together with an overall increase in total cultivated land. This paper examines the impact of institutional changes in the cotton sector on the evolution of smallholders’ land-use decisions. The empirical analysis is supported by a structural model that takes into account the specific institutional features of the Burkinabè cotton sector and builds upon household level data collected in rural Burkina Faso. We attribute most of the change in land use to the newly established institutional arrangements between producers and stakeholders, mechanization, and slackening of the food security constraint.

A Structural Land-Use Analysis of Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change: A Proactive Approach

Palavras-chave: Burkina Faso; Cotton; Land Use; Commodity Reform; Institutional Arrangements; Farm Management; Financial Economics; N57; 013; O33; Q15; Q18.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/93136

Kaminski, Jonathan; Kan, Iddo; Fleischer, Aliza.

This article proposes a proactive approach for analyzing agricultural adaptation to climate change based on a structural land-use model wherein farmers maximize profit by allocating their land between crop-technology bundles. The profitability of the bundles is a function of four technological attributes via which climate variables‟ effect is channeled: yield potential; input requirements; yields' sensitivity to input use; and farm-level management costs. Proactive adaptation measures are derived by identifying the technological attributes via which climate variables reduce overall agricultural profitability, despite adaptation by land reallocation among bundles. By applying the model to Israel, we find that long-term losses stem from yield potential...

Tipo: Article

Palavras-chave: Adaptation; Agricultural land use; Climate change; Crop-technology bundles; Land Economics/Use.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/120076

Changing Incentives to Sow Cotton for African Farmers: Evidence from the Burkina Faso Reform

Over the last 10 years, Burkina Faso has experienced a reform of its cotton sector, and is now the largest African cotton producer and exporter. The cotton ”boom” consisted of a rapid expansion of cotton areas through the growth of land shares allocated to cotton (and new producers), together with an overall increase in total cultivated land. In this paper, we present an empirical framework to determine the contribution of total farmland changes in the increase of land dedicated to cotton, where both processes are represented by ordered endogenous variables. We then analyze data that we collected in rural Burkina Faso in March 2006 within this framework. From measurable indicators of farmer behavior and variables that measure farmer statements for the...