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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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experts

Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Jeffrey Bloem

Research Fellow

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Jeffrey Bloem

Bio

Jeff Bloem is a Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit whose research interest is in applied microeconomics with applications in agriculture, conflict, and psychology. He holds a BS in economics from Calvin College, Michigan; an MS in Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics from Michigan State University; and a PhD in applied economics from the University of Minnesota.

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Publications

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Brief

Take-up of cash loans vs. agricultural input loans: A pilot study

2024Ambler, Kate; Balana, Bedru; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Maruyama, Eduardo; Olanrewaju, Opeyemi
Details

Take-up of cash loans vs. agricultural input loans: A pilot study

Smallholder farmers must invest in agricultural inputs (i.e., seeds, chemicals, equipment, land, and labor) during the planting season before earning income from the sale of agricultural produce after harvest. Credit can help relax liquidity constraints. In rural Nigeria, access to credit is limited, especially formal credit from financial institutions. Less than a third of households in rural Nigeria report using credit and only two percent of rural households borrowed credit from formal financial institutions (EFInA 2020). The rest is borrowed informally from friends, family, or local money lenders. Credit can take many different forms. For example, credit can take the form of a cash loan, where funds are provided to a borrower to make an investment of any kind. Another common form of credit is when specific goods, for instance agricultural inputs, are provided in advance to a payment. In both cases, the borrower must pay back both the loan amount, and any interest incurred from the loan. We partnered with Crop2Cash, a digital financial technology startup company operating in Nigeria, to test take-up for these two forms of credit.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ambler, Kate; Balana, Bedru; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Maruyama, Eduardo; Olanrewaju, Opeyemi

Citation

Ambler, Kate; Balana, Bedru; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Maruyama, Eduardo; and Olanrewaju, Opeyemi. 2024. Take-up of cash loans vs. agricultural input loans: A pilot study. Rethinking Food Markets Initiative Project Note September 2024. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152224

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Southern Africa; Western Africa; Smallholders; Farm Inputs; Income; Agriculture; Credit; Loans

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Brief

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Working Paper

The unmet financial needs of intermediary firms within agri-food value chains in Uganda and Bangladesh

2024Adong, Annet; Ambler, Kate; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; de Brauw, Alan; Herskowitz, Sylvan; Islam, AHM Saiful; Wagner, Julia
Details

The unmet financial needs of intermediary firms within agri-food value chains in Uganda and Bangladesh

Intermediary firms within agri-food value chains operating between the farmgate and retailers typically account for at least as much, if not more, value added as the primary agricultural production sector of the economy, but little is known about how these small and largely informal firms conduct their business. Drawing on a set of innovative surveys implemented amid the arabica coffee and soybean value chains in Uganda and the rice and potato value chains in Bangladesh, we describe the financial activities of the firms that transform agricultural produce into food. We document four sets of results. First, across all intermediary actors in our data the overwhelming majority of transactions are cash-based. Second, although many intermediary actors are un-banked, access to financial accounts varies considerably by value chain segment, commodity, and country. Third, while most intermediary actors report using mobile money for personal purposes, especially in Uganda, very few use mobile money to facilitate business transactions. Fourth, although intermediary actors frequently report exposure to risk, very few effectively manage this risk. We conclude by discussing how intermediary agri-food value chain actors represent an underappreciated population for the promotion of new technologies both to improve the stability of the agricultural sector and to improve outcomes among smallholder farmers.

Year published

2024

Authors

Adong, Annet; Ambler, Kate; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; de Brauw, Alan; Herskowitz, Sylvan; Islam, AHM Saiful; Wagner, Julia

Citation

Adong, Annet; Ambler, Kate; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; de Brauw, Alan; Herskowitz, Sylvan; Islam, AHM Saiful; and Wagner, Julia. 2024. The unmet financial needs of intermediary firms within agri-food value chains in Uganda and Bangladesh. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2266. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/151859

Country/Region

Bangladesh; Uganda

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Asia; Southern Asia; Agrifood Systems; Finance; Mobile Phones; Technology; Value Chains

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Working Paper

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Journal Article

The paper of how: Estimating treatment effects using the front-door criterion

2024Bellemare, Marc F.; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Wexler, Noah
Details

The paper of how: Estimating treatment effects using the front-door criterion

We illustrate the use of Pearl’s (1995) front-door criterion with observational data with an application in which the assumptions for point identification hold. For identification, the front-door criterion leverages exogenous mediator variables on the causal path. After a preliminary discussion of the identification assumptions behind and the estimation framework used for the front-door criterion, we present an empirical application. In our application, we look at the effect of deciding to share an Uber or Lyft ride on tipping by exploiting the algorithm-driven exogenous variation in whether one actually shares a ride conditional on authorizing sharing, the full fare paid, and origin–destination fixed effects interacted with two-hour interval fixed effects. We find that most of the observed negative relationship between choosing to share a ride and tipping is driven by customer selection into sharing rather than by sharing itself. In the Appendix, we explore the consequences of violating the identification assumptions for the front-door criterion.

Year published

2024

Authors

Bellemare, Marc F.; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Wexler, Noah

Citation

Bellemare, Marc F.; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; and Wexler, Noah. 2024. The paper of how: Estimating treatment effects using the front-door criterion. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 86(4): 951-993. https://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12598

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Economics; Data; Approximation; Transport

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12598 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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.