TY - GEN digital ID - 131674755 TI - Institutions and Agrarian Development : A New Approach to West Africa AU - Bulte, Erwin AU - Richards, Paul AU - Voors, Maarten PY - 2018 SN - 9783319985008 PB - Cham Springer International Publishing :Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan DB - UniCat KW - Economic growth KW - Economic conditions. Economic development KW - Developing countries: economic development problems KW - Economics KW - Agronomy KW - economie KW - landbouwbeleid KW - ontwikkelingssamenwerking KW - economische groei KW - Sierra Leone KW - West Africa KW - Africa UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:131674755 AB - This book argues that development strategies have thus far failed in Western Africa because the many challenges afflicting the area have yet to be explored and understood from the perspective of institutional resources. With a particular focus on three countries on the bend of the Upper West African coast – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – this book offers a theory to account for the nature of these institutional elements, to test deductions against evidence, and finally to propose a reset for rural development policy to make fuller use of local institutional resources. Based on quantitative analysis and eight years of multidisciplinary field research, this volume features several large-scale RCTs in the domain of rural development, local governance, and nature conservation. The authors address one of the biggest topics in agricultural and development economics today: the structural transformation of poor, agrarian economies, and they do so through the important and unique lens of institutions. ER -