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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.

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researcher spotlight

Samuel Benin

Samuel Benin is the Acting Director for Africa in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. He conducts research on national strategies and public investment for accelerating food systems transformation in Africa and provides analytical support to the African Union’s CAADP Biennial Review.

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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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experts

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Mehrab Bakhtiar

Research Fellow

Bio

Mehrab Bakhtiar is a Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. A Bangladeshi development economist, he uses experimental and non-experimental methods to study the impact of interventions related to social protection, nutrition, and agriculture with a special focus on women’s empowerment and intrahousehold decision-making. He has carried out research in Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. As Deputy Chief of Party of the Feed the Future Bangladesh Agricultural Policy Activity, he has helped lead IFPRI’s policy engagements, research outreach, and implementation of national and sub-national surveys in Bangladesh since 2019.

Prior to his work with IFPRI, Bakhtiar worked as a Research Analyst at the Africa Gender Innovation Lab at the World Bank and was selected in the World Bank’s Young Professionals Program in 2019. Before heading to graduate school, he was a Research Coordinator at Innovations for Poverty Action, Bangladesh. He received his PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from University of Maryland–College Park, where his doctoral research was recognized by the Dr. and Mrs. Bill V. Lessley Dissertation Excellence Award.

Publications

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Evaluation of a livestock financing project in Bangladesh: Navigating operational, environmental, and behavioral challenges

2023Ambler, Kate; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Brauw, Alan de; Uddin, Mohammad Riad
Details

Evaluation of a livestock financing project in Bangladesh: Navigating operational, environmental, and behavioral challenges

Smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries have limited access to finance, due to the pau city of banks and other financial institutions in rural areas. As a result, banks and other formal financial institutions tend not to know much about farming as a business, and therefore they hesitate to extend credit to farmers. Such reluctance is often attributed to the elevated costs and risks linked with small, geographically dispersed farms, as well as the farmers’ lack of collateral. Microfinance has emerged as a crucial intervention in bridging this gap. However, the fixed and rigid repayment structures of microfinance institutions (MFIs) often clash with the seasonal nature of agricultural production. This mismatch creates financial strain for farmers, who must manage cash flows that are inherently unpredictable due to factors like weather variability and market fluctuations. These challenges underscore the need for more flexible and tailored financial solutions.

Year published

2023

Authors

Ambler, Kate; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Brauw, Alan de; Uddin, Mohammad Riad

Citation

Ambler, Kate; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; de Brauw, Alan; and Uddin, Mohammad Riad. 2023. Evaluation of a livestock financing project in Bangladesh: Navigating operational, environmental, and behavioral challenges. Rethinking Food Markets Initiative Note December 2023. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Smallholders; Finance; Rural Areas; Farming; Mircofinance; Risk

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.137043 Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Brief

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Journal Article

Household dairy production, dairy intake, and anthropometric outcomes in rural Bangladesh

2023Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Hoddinott, John F.
Details

Household dairy production, dairy intake, and anthropometric outcomes in rural Bangladesh

We assess whether ownership of dairy cows is associated with a greater likelihood of consuming dairy products and with child anthropometric status in rural Bangladesh. Consistent with the assumption of imperfectly functioning markets for dairy products, ownership of dairy cows increases the likelihood that a child 6–59 months consumes milk by 7.7 percentage points with no difference in this association between boys and girls. This association nearly doubles in magnitude when we consider households that own a dairy cow that produced milk in the last year. This result is robust to the controls we use and the way in which we measure dairy cow ownership. Even when we saturate our model with child, maternal, household, wealth, as well as village fixed effects, we retain an association between dairy cow ownership and height-for-age z scores (HAZ) that is meaningful in magnitude – 0.13 standard deviations – and statistically significant at the one percent level. For children in the 12–23.9 month age group, ownership of a dairy cow is associated with a 0.37 SD increase in HAZ and a reduction of 11.3 percentage points in stunting. There is no statistically significant association with weight-for-height or wasting. These associations do not differ between boys and girls.

Year published

2023

Authors

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Hoddinott, John F.

Citation

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; and Hoddinott, John F. 2023. Household dairy production, dairy intake, and anthropometric outcomes in rural Bangladesh. Food Policy 121(November 2023): 102567. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2023.102567

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Milk Products; Child Nutrition; Anthropometry; Households; Stunting; Food Consumption; Dairy Cows; Rural Areas

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2023.102567 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Social and financial incentives for overcoming a collective action problem

2023Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Guiteras, Raymond; Levinsohn, James; Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq
Details

Social and financial incentives for overcoming a collective action problem

Addressing public health externalities often requires community-level collective action. Due to social norms, each person’s sanitation investment decisions may depend on the decisions of neighbors. We report on a cluster randomized controlled trial conducted with 19,000 households in rural Bangladesh where we grouped neighboring households and introduced (either financial or social recognition) rewards with a joint liability component for the group, or asked each group member to make a private or public pledge to maintain a hygienic latrine. The group financial reward has the strongest impact in the short term (3 months), inducing a 7.5–12.5 percentage point increase in hygienic latrine ownership, but this effect dissipates in the medium term (15 months). In contrast, the public commitment induced a 4.2–6.3 percentage point increase in hygienic latrine ownership in the short term, but this effect persists in the medium term. Non-financial social recognition or a private pledge has no detectable effect on sanitation investments.

Year published

2023

Authors

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Guiteras, Raymond; Levinsohn, James; Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq

Citation

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Guiteras, Raymond; Levinsohn, James; and Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq. 2023. Social and financial incentives for overcoming a collective action problem. Journal of Development Economics 162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103072

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Collective Action; Investment; Hygiene; Decision Making; Social Norms; Public Health; Finance

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103072 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Events

Into, Through and Beyond USAID Programs: Lessons from the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index
IFPRI at External Event

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March 29, 2023, 9:00 – 10:15 am

Into, Through and Beyond USAID Programs: Lessons from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

Virtual Event: March 29, 2023 – 9:00 AM- 10:15 AM EDT. This webinar will mark the launch of two briefs, one on the use cases of WEAI in USAID projects worldwide and the other on how WEAI has informed and supported the design of policies and programs in Bangladesh.