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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Kalyani Raghunathan

Kalyani Raghunathan is Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit, based in New Delhi, India. Her research lies at the intersection of agriculture, gender, social protection, and public health and nutrition, with a specific focus on South Asia and Africa. 

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Innovation Policy and Scaling

Guush Berhane

Senior Research Fellow

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Bio

Guush Berhane is a Senior Research Fellow in the Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit. His research focuses on policies and innovations to promote agricultural transformation, rural livelihoods, and well-being, and on the impact of social protection interventions in mitigating food insecurity and vulnerability. Much of his research is based on econometric and quasi-experimental impact evaluation methods. His most recent work extends to understanding welfare outcomes in conflict and fragility settings and interventions to facilitate post-conflict rehabilitation and rebuilding. He has ongoing research in Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia. Between 2009 and 2020, he was part of IFPRI’s Ethiopia Strategy Support Program (ESSP) based in Ethiopia and has extensive experience in designing and conducting large-scale household surveys as well as wider engagements with policymakers and communities. His work has been published in journals including the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, World Development, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Land Use Policy. Guush holds a PhD in Economics and a master’s degree in Development Economics from Wageningen University, Netherlands.

Publications

Google Scholar Citations

RePEc Author Profile

Publications

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Working Paper

Targeting social assistance in fragile settings: An experiment on community-based targeting

2024Abay, Kibrom A.; Berhane, Guush; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Tafere, Kibrom; Taffesse, Alemayehu Seyoum
Details

Targeting social assistance in fragile settings: An experiment on community-based targeting

Targeting is an important but challenging process in the design and delivery of social and humanitarian assistance programs. Community-based targeting (CBT) approaches are often preferred for their local information advantages, especially when data-driven methods are not feasible. However, how different variants of CBT approaches fare under various constraints and environments remains unclear. For example, it is not obvious whether agents involved in CBT maximize the number of beneficiaries or the intensity of transfers when given different levels of discretion or they face budget constraints. We implemented a clustered randomized control trial among community leaders in 180 villages in Ethiopia to evaluate how community leaders target and allocate resources when they face budget constraints and are in the presence (absence) of discretion. We find that under resource constraints, community leaders prefer to maximize the number of beneficiaries even at the expense of thinly spreading budgets (reducing average transfers to beneficiaries). Community leaders are keen to minimize exclusion errors even at the expense of increased inclusion errors, suggesting that community leaders may be sensitive to potential communal repercussions and hence prefer to accommodate beneficiaries who would otherwise be excluded based on survey-based measures and indicators of poverty. Consistent with this, we find that offering community leaders some level of discretion helps them reduce exclusion errors and include those most deprived or those affected by armed conflicts. Finally, we find that community leaders are more vulnerable to favoritism when real stakes (rather than hypothetical) are involved, budgets are relatively larger, and they lack discretion. We offer nuanced evidence about the implications of implementing CBT designs in the absence of incentives for community leaders to reveal how they use local information.

Year published

2024

Authors

Abay, Kibrom A.; Berhane, Guush; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Tafere, Kibrom; Taffesse, Alemayehu Seyoum

Citation

Abay, Kibrom A.; Berhane, Guush; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Tafere, Kibrom; and Taffesse, Alemayehu Seyoum. 2024. Targeting social assistance in fragile settings: An experiment on community-based targeting. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2289. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Community Development; Fragility; Social Protection; Targeting

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Revisiting the demand and profitability of chemical fertilizers amid global fuel-food-fertilizer crisis: Evidence from Ethiopia

2024Assefa, Thomas; Berhane, Guush; Abate, Gashaw T.; Abay, Kibrom A.
Details

Revisiting the demand and profitability of chemical fertilizers amid global fuel-food-fertilizer crisis: Evidence from Ethiopia

We revisit the state of smallholder fertilizer demand and profitability in Ethiopia in the face of the recent global fuel–food–fertilizer price crisis triggered by the Russian–Ukraine war and compounded by other domestic supply shocks. We first examine farmers’ response to changes in both fertilizer and food prices by estimating price elasticity of demand. We then revisit the profitability of fertilizer by computing average value–cost ratios (AVCRs) associated with fertilizer application before and after these crises. We use three-round detailed longitudinal household survey data, covering both pre-crisis (2016 and 2019) and post-crisis (2023) production periods, focusing on three main staple crops in Ethiopia (maize, teff, and wheat). Our analysis shows that fertilizer adoption, use, and yield levels were increasing until the recent crises, but these trends seem halted by these crises. We also find relatively large fertilizer price elasticity of demand estimates, ranging between 0.4 and 1.1, which vary across crops and are substantially larger than previous estimates. We find suggestive evidence that households with smaller farm sizes are relatively more responsive to changes in fertilizer prices. We also document that farmers’ response to increases in staple crop prices is not as strong as perceived and hence appears to be statistically insignificant. Finally, we show important dynamics in the profitability of chemical fertilizer. While the AVCRs show profitable trends for most crops, the share of farmers with profitable AVCRs declined following the fertilizer price surge. Our findings offer important insights for policy focusing on mitigating the adverse effects of fertilizer price shocks.

Year published

2024

Authors

Assefa, Thomas; Berhane, Guush; Abate, Gashaw T.; Abay, Kibrom A.

Citation

Assefa, Thomas; Berhane, Guush; Abate, Gashaw T.; and Abay, Kibrom. 2024. 2024. Revisiting the demand and profitability of chemical fertilizers amid global fuel-food-fertilizer crisis: Evidence from Ethiopia. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2263. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Fertilizer Application; Smallholders; Household Surveys; Yield Response Factor; Shock

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Working Paper

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Other

Community-Based Cash Transfer in fragile and conflict-affected communities

2024Abay, Kibrom A.; Berhane, Guush; Gilligan, Daniel; Tafere, Kibrom; Taffesse, Alemayehu
Details

Community-Based Cash Transfer in fragile and conflict-affected communities

This project evaluates the impact of community-based cash transfers on household welfare in conflict affected and fragile settings. We aim to address the following important questions: (1) Can Community-Based cash transfers improve food security and subjective well-being of beneficiaries in conflict-affected settings? (ii) Can relatively small community-based cash transfers improve mental health and stress in the face of recurrent conflicts? (iii) Do welfare impacts of community-based cash transfers vary by how they are targeted? (iv) Are community-based transfers more impactful for improving welfare outcomes in conflict affected communities? (v) What is the impact of community-based cash transfers on trust in local governance and social cohesion in the presence and absence of conflicts? To address these questions, we design a cluster-based Randomized Control Trial (RCT) and randomly assign communities into control group and community-based cash transfers involving different targeting approaches.

Year published

2024

Authors

Abay, Kibrom A.; Berhane, Guush; Gilligan, Daniel; Tafere, Kibrom; Taffesse, Alemayehu

Citation

Abay, Kibrom; Berhane, Guush; Gilligan, Daniel; Tafere, Kibrom; Taffesse, Alemayehu. 2024. Community-Based Cash Transfer in fragile and conflict-affected communities. AEA RCT Registry.

Keywords

Cash Tranfers; Conflicts; Social Welfare

Language

English

Access/Licence

Limited Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12795-1.0 Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Other

Blogs

Grappling with compounding crises in domestic fertilizer markets in Africa: The case of Ethiopia
IFPRI Blog
 | 
January 16, 2024

Grappling with compounding crises in domestic fertilizer markets in Africa: The case of Ethiopia

By Kibrom Abay, Thomas W. Assefa, Guush Berhane, Gashaw Tadesse Abate, and Charlotte Hebebrand

Local effects of global shocks persist.

Ethiopia’s social safety net effective in limiting COVID-19 impacts on rural food insecurity
IFPRI Blog
 | 
January 28, 2021

Ethiopia’s social safety net effective in limiting COVID-19 impacts on rural food insecurity

By Kibrom A. Abay, Guush Berhane, John Hoddinott, and Kibrom Tafere

A survey shows such programs can be effective in addressing the impacts of sudden shocks.

Events

2023 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting
IFPRI at External Event

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July 23 to 25, 2023

2023 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting

Event: July 23, 2023 – 8:30 AM to July 25, 2023 – 4:15 PM EDT. IFPRI is participating in the 2023 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting.

2021 ReSAKSS Conference
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November 15 to 17, 2021

2021 ReSAKSS Conference

Virtual Event: Nov 15, 2021 – 07:00 AM to Nov 17, 2021 – 10:30 AM EST. IFPRI is participating in the virtual 2021 ReSAKSS Conference. 

31st International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE)
IFPRI at External Event

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August 17 to 31, 2021

31st International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE)

Virtual Event: AUG 17, 2021 – 08:00 AM to AUG 31, 2021 08:00 PM EDT. IFPRI is participating in the 31st Conference of Agriculture Economists organized by the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE). 

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