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Who we are

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.

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researcher spotlight

Khalid Siddig

Khalid Siddig is a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit and Program Leader for the Sudan Strategy Support Program. He is an agricultural economist with a focus on examining the impacts of potential shocks and the allocation of resources on economic growth, environmental sustainability, and income distribution through the lens of economywide and micro-level tools. 

Where we work

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Where we work

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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Unit

Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Vi Thanh Market is the largest and most special outdoor agricultural market in Vietnam

Drastic changes in the functioning of food markets are needed to achieve food security and adequate nutrition for all people, as well as contributing to poverty reduction and environmental sustainability.

Research units

Overview

The Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit (MTI) provides innovative, evidence-based policy solutions to help drive inclusive and sustainable economic growth for smallholders, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and workers in the agrifood sector. By analyzing local, regional, and global economic environments, trade conditions, and value chains from farm to fork, MTI identifies policies that can transform agricultural and rural economies and build resilience to climatic and market shocks.

These policies include measures toward more effective market institutions and regulation, greater market efficiency, lower transaction costs, and reduced food loss and waste, along with greater market access and income and employment opportunities for smallholders, SMEs, and workers in the agrifood sector. MTI conducts research in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Areas of Focus

Market-based solutions

Market imperfections impede healthy and sustainable food system outcomes. To address these imperfections, MTI conducts research on market-based solutions and adequate policy support for achieving food safety, affordable healthy diets, food loss reduction, and sustainable production. This research includes analysis of options and trade-offs of reorienting existing agricultural support for achieving these multiple objectives for food system change.

Inclusive value chains

Agrifood systems are a major source of employment but fail to provide decent livelihoods for most farmers and workers. MTI research seeks to leverage food value chain innovations, using inclusive business models and process innovations in logistics, wholesale and retail trade, and finance to make food production and distribution more efficient, while creating better incomes, jobs and livelihoods, especially for women and youth. A gender perspective is integrated into all MTI research.

Trade policies

World food markets are volatile, but increasingly important for food security and sustainability. MTI research evaluates the impact of trade barriers, including nontariff barriers and food standards, and the potential for trade policy reform to achieve food system sustainability, food safety, and food security across countries. MTI’s research and expertise also contribute to global agendas, including G20 and World Trade Organization discussions on trade and farm policy.

Shocks and resilience

Conflict, climate change, and global economic shocks pose increasing risks to rural livelihoods and food security. MTI contributes to decision-making for increased food system resilience by providing real-time monitoring of risks, building evidence on risk-management options such as innovative approaches to crop insurance and bundled risk management mechanisms, and tools for assessing impacts of global shocks on domestic food systems.

Methods and tools

MTI researchers use state-of-the-art global trade and economywide modeling tools, causal impact analysis, assessment of risk-management innovations, and farm-to-fork value chain analysis, including measurement of food loss and its causes. MTI contributes to capacity building and knowledge sharing through the Food Security Portal, AGRODEP, the AgIncentives Consortium, the G20 Technical Platform for the Measurement of Food Loss and Waste (TPFLW), G20’s Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), and the Knowledge Platform for Inclusive Markets and Value Chains (KISM).

Explore our latest research

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Journal Article

Experimental measures of intra-household resource control

2024Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; Recalde, María P.
Details

Experimental measures of intra-household resource control

We study experimental measures of preferences for intra-household resource control among 3387 couples in Ghana and Uganda. We implement two incentivized tasks: (1) a game that measures willingness to pay for resource control in the household, and (2) dictator games played privately and jointly by spouses. Across study sites we find that women exhibit a higher willingness to pay for resource control than their husbands and have less influence over joint dictator game decisions. Importantly, behavior in the two tasks is correlated, suggesting that they capture similar underlying latent variables. In Uganda, experimental measures from both tasks are also robustly correlated with a range of survey measures of women’s access to resources, agency, and wellbeing. This is not the case in Ghana, suggesting that contextual factors may be important, and researchers may want to collect both measures in a project. Like other recent papers, we find that an important fraction of respondents display negative willingness to pay for intra-household resource control. Our analysis shows that such behavior is displayed by women who have higher levels of economic empowerment and wellbeing, a result that contradicts previous conjectures made in the literature. Altogether, our analysis suggests that, despite lacking ideal theoretical properties, private dictator game decisions (even when collected only from the wife) can perform well as proxies of empowerment. JEL Codes: C9, D13, J12, J16

Year published

2024

Authors

Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; Recalde, María P.

Citation

Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; and Recalde, María P. 2024. Experimental measures of intra-household resource control. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 227(November 2024): 106705. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106705

Country/Region

Ghana; Uganda

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Western Africa; Bargaining Power; Decision Making; Households; Women’s Empowerment; Gender; Women

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106705 Source record

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Journal Article

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Working Paper

Irrigation schemes in Ethiopia’s Awash River Basin: An examination of physical, knowledge, and governance infrastructures

2024Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Yimam, Seid; Arega, Tiruwork; Alemu, Tekie; Gonfa, Kidist H.; Ringler, Claudia
Details

Irrigation schemes in Ethiopia’s Awash River Basin: An examination of physical, knowledge, and governance infrastructures

Using a representative sample of irrigation schemes, the study documents the physical, knowledge, and governance infrastructures of irrigation schemes in Ethiopia’s most intensively used river basin, the Awash. The findings show that about 20 percent of the equipped area of irrigation schemes in the basin is not being irrigated, while the number of actual beneficiaries on average exceeds the number of planned beneficiaries. The results also show significant knowledge gaps among irrigation scheme managers, extension agents, and leaders of water users’ associations (WUAs): 96 percent of them do not know the total water withdrawals or the irrigation water requirement per season. About 14 percent of the surveyed irrigation schemes have neither traditional water committees nor WUAs, and only 21 percent are organized in legally registered WUAs despite a substantial number of identified benefits of these organizations. Moreover, only 58 out of 489 irrigation schemes have women committee members. Many schemes lack a clear strategy for covering maintenance costs: almost 40 percent of schemes collect contributions from members only when the system fails, while 17 percent report no contributions for maintenance at all suggesting considerable risk of system deterioration and failure. The results challenge some of the assumptions about irrigation infrastructure in Ethiopia and confirm and quantify other assumptions in the literature.

Year published

2024

Authors

Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Yimam, Seid; Arega, Tiruwork; Alemu, Tekie; Gonfa, Kidist H.; Ringler, Claudia

Citation

Mekonnen, Dawit K.; Yimam, Seid; Arega, Tiruwork; Alemu, Tekie; Gonfa, Kidist H.; and Ringler, Claudia. 2024. Irrigation schemes in Ethiopia’s Awash River Basin: An examination of physical, knowledge, and governance infrastructures. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2287. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Irrigation Schemes; Infrastructure; Awash River; River Basins; Advisory Officers; Water User Associations; Women

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

NEXUS Gains

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Systematic risk profiling: A novel approach with applications to Kenya, Rwanda, and Malawi

2024Mukashov, Askar; Robinson, Sherman; Thurlow, James; Arndt, Channing; Thomas, Timothy S.
Details

Systematic risk profiling: A novel approach with applications to Kenya, Rwanda, and Malawi

This paper uses machine learning, simulation, and data mining methods to develop Systematic Risk Profiles of three developing economies: Kenya, Rwanda, and Malawi. We focus on three exogenous shocks with implications for economic performance: world market prices, capital flows, and climate-driven sectoral productivity. In these and other developing countries, recent decades have been characterized by increased risks associated with all these factors, and there is a demand for instruments that can help to disentangle them. For each country, we utilize historical data to develop multi-variate distributions of shocks. We then sample from these distributions to obtain a series of shock vectors, which we label economic uncertainty scenarios. These scenarios are then entered into economywide computable general equilibrium (CGE) simulation models for the three countries, which allow us to quantify the impact of increased uncertainty on major economic indicators. Finally, we utilize importance metrics from the random forest machine learning algorithm and relative importance metrics from multiple linear regression models to quantify the importance of country-specific risk factors for country performance. We find that Malawi and Rwanda are more vulnerable to sectoral productivity shocks, and Kenya is more exposed to external risks. These findings suggest that a country’s level of development and integration into the global economy are key driving forces defining their risk profiles. The methodology of Systematic Risk Profiling can be applied to many other countries, delineating country-specific risks and vulnerabilities.

Year published

2024

Authors

Mukashov, Askar; Robinson, Sherman; Thurlow, James; Arndt, Channing; Thomas, Timothy S.

Citation

Mukashov, Askar; Robinson, Sherman; Thurlow, James; Arndt, Channing; and Thomas, Timothy S. 2024. Systematic risk profiling: A novel approach with applications to Kenya, Rwanda, and Malawi. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2286. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Kenya; Rwanda; Malawi

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Climate; Computable General Equilibrium Models; Machine Learning; Risk; Uncertainty

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Foresight

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

One year of war in Gaza: Food emergency continues with no end in sight
IFPRI Blog
 | 
October 04, 2024

One year of war in Gaza: Food emergency continues with no end in sight

By Rob Vos

Problems of feeding more than 2 million people in a war zone.

The likely U.S. longshoreman strike and its implications for agricultural trade
IFPRI Blog
 | 
September 30, 2024

The likely U.S. longshoreman strike and its implications for agricultural trade

By Joseph Glauber

Disruptions ahead for some developing countries exporting to the U.S.

Does conflict-driven internal displacement influence demand for agricultural inputs? Evidence from Nigeria
IFPRI Blog
 | 
September 26, 2024

Does conflict-driven internal displacement influence demand for agricultural inputs? Evidence from Nigeria

By Mulubrhan Amare, Kate Ambler, Temilolu Bamiwuye, Jeffrey Bloem, Rewa Misra, and Julia Wagner

Examining the effectiveness of vouchers and marketing information.

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News

September 03, 2024 | Press Release

Ruth Hill joins IFPRI as the new Director of the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit

Ruth Hill joins IFPRI as the new Director of its Markets, Trade, and Institutions (MTI) Unit, starting September 3, 2024. 

January 25, 2024 | In the News

The timing of the Red Sea attacks could not be worse for Democrats (Politico)

Senior research fellow Joseph Glauber is quoted in a Politico story about how the growing military conflict in a key trade corridor is threatening to unleash economic havoc on the global economy ahead of November. “If energy prices go up and remain high, you’d see food inflation persisting,” said Joe Glauber. He added that potential […]

January 18, 2024 | In the News

Red Sea attacks reverberate in food and ag trade (Successful Farming) 

Successful Farming quotes the IFPRI blog post on the Impacts of Red Sea shipping disruptions on global food security by senior research fellow Joseph Glauber and senior research analyst Abdullah Mamun.  According to the article, Houthi attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea are disrupting grain shipments from Europe, Ukraine, and Russia. “Trade disruptions are most likely to impact […]

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Events

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia: Connecting the Dots Across Systems
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

December 3 to 5, 2024

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia: Connecting the Dots Across Systems

South Asia grapples with escalating levels of malnutrition in various forms, including undernutrition, overweight and obesity, and micronutrient deficiencies, alongside increasing incidence of diet-related non-communicable diseases. Malnutrition results from a complex interplay of factors incorporating household and individual decision-making, agriculture and food systems, healthcare services, education, and socio-ecological systems that determine access to services and […]

Learning Support for a Multi-Country Climate Resilience Programme for Food Security
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

November 5, 2024, 9:00 – 10:30 am

Learning Support for a Multi-Country Climate Resilience Programme for Food Security

Also streaming on Please type your questions into the chat box with name, affiliation, and country. The event video, presenter slides, and podcast will be available in the days following the event. The Learning Support for a Sub-Saharan Africa Multi-Country Climate Resilience Program for Food Security, launched in 2023, aims to enhance food security and […]

Supporting and shaping the global nutrition agenda with evidence: A three-decade journey of research and partnerships for impact
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

October 30, 2024, 10:00 – 11:30 am

Supporting and shaping the global nutrition agenda with evidence: A three-decade journey of research and partnerships for impact

Also streaming on Please type your questions into the chat box with name, affiliation, and country. The event video, presenter slides, and podcast will be available in the days following the event. Presentation: 10:00am–11:30 am EDT | light lunch reception to follow This year’s Forman Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Marie Ruel, Senior Research […]

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Recent Work

Search Our Publications

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Essential Reading
The Russia-Ukraine Conflict & Global Food Security
The Russia-Ukraine conflict and global food security

The Russia-Ukraine conflict and global food security

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, sparking fears of a global food crisis, IFPRI responded rapidly to the need for information and policy advice to address the crisis. From the first moments of the conflict, a new IFPRI blog series provided critical information and insights into the impacts on food security, caused by rising food, fertilizer, and fuel prices and trade disruptions, for vulnerable countries and regions. This book is a compilation of those blog posts, which include analysis of trade flows, tracking of food prices and policy responses, and results of impact modeling. Together, they provide an overview of how the crisis has progressed, how the international community and individual countries responded with efforts to ensure food security, and what we are learning about the best ways to ensure food security in the aftermath of a major shock to global food systems.

Year published

2023

Project

Markets, Trade, and Institutions (MTI); Food and Nutrition Policy

Engaging women's groups to improve nutrition
Engaging women’s groups to improve nutrition: Findings from an evaluation of the Jeevika multisectoral convergence pilot in Saharsa, Bihar

Engaging women’s groups to improve nutrition: Findings from an evaluation of the Jeevika multisectoral convergence pilot in Saharsa, Bihar

This report presents the endline findings of an impact evaluation of the JEEViKA Multisectoral Convergence pilot, designed as an effectiveness trial, in one district in Bihar, India. JEEViKA, a rural livelihoods project, supports self-help groups (SHGs) – savings and credit-based groups of about 15-20 women, mostly targeted toward those from poor households – with the aim of improving their livelihoods and enhancing household incomes. The JEEViKA Multisectoral Convergence (JEEViKA-MC) pilot went a step further, leveraging these SHGs to address the immediate and underlying determinants of undernutrition among women and children. The multisectoral convergence model, developed by the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society with technical support from the World Bank, was piloted in 12 Gram Panchayats of Saharsa district in Bihar. Two complementary sets of interventions-health and nutrition behavior change communication (BCC) to improve women’s knowledge and household practices, and efforts to improve service access through convergence -were layered onto the existing core package of JEEViKA activities and were targeted to women who were members of the SHGs already formed by JEEViKA. Within this target population, households with young children, mothers of young children, and pregnant women were the primary focus of the JEEViKA-MC pilot.

Year published

2019

Project

PHND; A4NH

show me what you eat
Show me what you eat: Assessing diets remotely through pictures

Show me what you eat: Assessing diets remotely through pictures

Goal: Using real-time smartphone meal pictures sent by rural or urban households to better monitor and assess the quality of their diets, and provide tailored recommendations to improve them. Detailed information on household and individual dietary intake is crucial for adequate nutritional monitoring and designing interventions to improve diets. Common recall-based methods are generally time consuming, costly, and subject to non-negligible measurement errors and potential biases. In addition, the scope of information that can be obtained in a regular survey is typically limited. Detailed diaries, in turn, are effort- and time-intensive and prone to errors. With increasing mobile penetration in both urban and rural areas, meal pictures can overcome some of these difficulties, providing real-time, detailed food intake information of individuals remotely and at a minimal cost. Moreover, pictures can be obtained over extended periods of time, beyond the standard short spans (i.e. 24-hours) in recall survey questions, with little to no data quality loss. Such rich consumption data can help identify and better understand vulnerabilities and nutritional imbalances —including specific macronutrient or micronutrient gaps or excesses—, and open the door for low-cost, individually tailored digital interventions to promote healthier diets. Moreover, crowdsourced data allow to identify locally available, affordable foods rich in specific nutrients consumed by similar households in the area. Interventions, in turn, can be delivered through text messages, interactive voice response (IVR), or phone calls, or videos or interactive games integrated into an app, benefitting from a two-way communication channel with individuals.

Year published

2021

Project

MTID

Our experts

Ruth Hill

Ruth Hill

Director, Markets, Trade, and Institutions, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions

Purnima Menon

Purnima Menon

Senior Director, Food and Nutrition Policy, CGIAR and IFPRI, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions, Nutrition, Diets, and Health, Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Valeria Piñeiro

Valeria Piñeiro

Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Latin
America and the Caribbean, Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Francisco Ceballos

Francisco Ceballos

Research Fellow, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions, Latin America and the Caribbean

Madhur Gautam

Madhur Gautam

Senior Research Fellow, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions

Antoine Bouet

Antoine Bouet

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions

Abdullah Mamun

Abdullah Mamun

Senior Research Analyst, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions

Mike Murphy

Mike Murphy

Senior Research Analyst, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions

Weilun Shi

Weilun Shi

Research Analyst, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions