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This paper studies the gender-based differences in access to and return from economic activities in the rural non-farm economy (RNFE) using panel datasets from Uganda and Ethiopia. The results show that female-headed households have limited access to paid employment and self-employment in the sector, particularly in some industries. These households also earn lower returns from RNFE than male-headed households, and the gross return gap is much higher in Uganda than in Ethiopia. Furthermore, endowment differences do not explain the return gap in Ethiopia, and only partially explain the gap in Uganda.

Employment --- Gender --- Rural Economy --- Rural Labor Market

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Severe weather shocks recurrently hit Malawi, and they adversely affect the incomes of many farm households as well as small businesses. With climate change, the frequency of extreme weather events is expected to increase further. A clear understanding of households' vulnerability to shock-induced poverty is critical for disaster risk management and the design of scalable social safety net programs. Standard poverty measures rely on static snapshots that are suitable for quantifying structural poverty but not for assessing the vulnerability of non-poor households to fall below the poverty line when they experience shocks. This study uses a nationally representative household survey and exogenously measured weather shocks to assess households' vulnerability to poverty in Malawi. To accurately estimate the impacts of shocks on consumption and vulnerability, the study excludes any kind of assistance (aid and food or cash transfers) that households might have received after major disasters. The key findings of the study are as follows: (1) drought during the growing season decreases non-assistance consumption per capita by 5-12 percent, depending on its intensity; (2) excess rainfall at the onset of the growing season reduces food consumption by 1.8 percent, while excess rainfall later in the growing season appears to increase consumption; (3) vulnerability to poverty is generally higher than static poverty, especially compared to static poverty measured during a good weather year; and (4) in years of extreme droughts, such as 2016, recorded poverty rates are higher than vulnerability, which indicates that the magnitude of drought in 2016 was so large that the chance of falling below the poverty line as a result of an even higher magnitude shock was low. These results suggest that identifying vulnerable households is key in designing adaptive social safety net programs that can be scaled up to cover those who become eligible for such programs after experiencing shocks.

Drought --- Drought Management --- Extreme Weather --- Flood Control --- Floods --- Natural Disasters --- Rainfall --- Safety Nets and Transfers --- Services and Transfers To Poor --- Social Safety Nets --- Vulnerability --- Weather Shocks --- Welfare

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The impact of drought on household welfare is the cumulative effect of crop losses and price changes in a local economy that are triggered by these initial losses. This paper combines data on monthly grain prices and wages in 82 retail markets over 17 years with data on district-level weather shocks to quantify the impact of drought on local prices and how this impact varies by month after harvest. The results show that price increases occur immediately after the completion of harvest and then dissipate so that inflationary effects are quite low during the lean season, contrary to commonly held views. The impact of shocks on prices is quite low now in Ethiopia - 4 percent at its peak post-2005 compared with 12 percent before 2005. In areas of the country where infrastructure investments have been high, there is now almost no inflationary impact of drought on prices. It is not clear whether it is infrastructure investments or something else that has driven that, but it shows that it is possible for rainfall shocks to have no inflationary impacts in low income economies. Inflationary impacts were also reduced more in districts where the Productive Safety Net Program was introduced. Comparing inflationary effects in districts with food versus cash transfers suggests that cash transfers do not have inflationary effects on grain prices during times of drought.

Agricultural Sector Economics --- Agriculture --- Climate Change and Agriculture --- Crop Loss --- Crop Price --- Crops and Crop Management Systems --- Environment --- Grain Market --- Natural Disasters --- Roads --- Safety Nets --- Seaonality --- Transfers --- Weather Shocks

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Interviewer design effects occur when data collected by the same interviewer is more similar than data collected by different interviewers. Design effects inflate survey variance and reduce the precision of estimates. Using household survey data collected via computer assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) in Sudan this paper employs a two-level mixed effects regression model to identify interviewer design effects for key variables. The study finds mean interviewer design effect values of 7 with a maximum of 16, implying a significant loss of precision. Recommendations to mitigate interviewer design effects include simplifying questions, sound survey implementation practices, and utilizing multi-way cluster robust standard errors to account for both area and interviewer clustering during data analysis.

Household surveys.

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Climate-induced disasters are causing increasingly frequent and intense economic damages, disproportionally affecting emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) relative to advanced economies (AEs). However, the impact of various types of climate shocks on output growth and fiscal positions of EMDEs is not fully understood. This research analyzes the macro-fiscal implications of three common climate disasters (droughts, storms, and floods) using a combination of macroeconomic data and comprehensive ground and satellite disaster indicators spanning the past three decades across 164 countries. Across EMDEs, where agriculture tends to be the principal sector, a drought reduces output growth by 1.4 percentage points and government revenue by 0.7 percent of GDP as it erodes the tax bases of affected countries. Meanwhile, likely reflecting limited fiscal space to respond to a disaster, fiscal expenditure does not increase following a drought. A storm drags output growth in EMDEs, albeit with negligible impact on fiscal revenue, but government expenditure increases due to reconstruction and clean-up efforts. We find only limited impact of localized floods on growth and fiscal positions. In contrast, AEs tend to experience negligible growth and fiscal consequences from climate-induced shocks. As these shocks have much more detrimental effects in EMDEs, international support for disaster preparedness and climate change adaptation play a crucial role for these countries to confront climate change.

Climate --- Currency crises --- Debt Management --- Debt --- Debts, Public --- Economic & financial crises & disasters --- Economics of specific sectors --- Economics --- Economics: General --- Environment --- Expenditure --- Expenditures, Public --- Finance --- Finance: General --- Financial services industry --- Fiscal Policy --- Fiscal policy --- Fiscal space --- Fiscal stance --- General Financial Markets: General (includes Measurement and Data) --- General Outlook and Conditions --- Global Warming --- Informal sector --- Macroeconomics --- National Government Expenditures and Related Policies: General --- Natural Disasters and Their Management --- Natural Disasters --- Natural disasters --- Public debt --- Public finance & taxation --- Public Finance --- Sovereign Debt --- Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue: General